2024 US Presidential Elections: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy believes that a strong relationship between the United States and India can help the US declare independence from China as the country is economically dependent on the East Asian nation.
In a video message shared by the news agency PTI, Ramaswamy said, “The US is economically dependent on China today, but with a stronger relationship with India, it becomes easier to declare independence from that Chinese relationship.”
“The US should also have a stronger strategic relationship with India, including even a military relationship in the Andaman Sea. Knowing that India, if necessary, could block the Malacca Strait where actually China gets most of its Middle Eastern oil supplies. So, these are areas for real improvement in the US-India relationship,” he said.
Biden Administration’s point person for South Asia has earlier said that the US wants to be part of India’s economic miracle.
“We want to be part of your economic miracle,” Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu had told PTI.
“We strongly support India’s goal to grow its economy in an inclusive way. The more India grows, the better it is for India, for the United States, and for the world. A prosperous India will have more resources to help address global problems,” Lu added.
Goldman Sachs in a report had said India, the fifth-largest economy, will become the second-largest economy in the world by 2075 surpassing not only Japan and Germany but also the United States. Currently, India is the world’s fifth-largest economy, behind Germany, Japan, China and the US.
Meanwhile, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who was on a four-day visit to Beijing in July this year, said that the United States and China have significant disagreements and they must be communicated “clearly and directly.”
She stated that the objective of the visit was to establish and deepen ties to China’s new economic team, reduce the risk of misunderstanding, and pave the way for cooperation in areas such as climate change and debt distress.
She reiterated that Washington was not seeking to decouple from China’s economy, adding doing so would be “disastrous for both countries and destabilizing for the world.”
During her visit, Yellen also asked China to support US-led institutions like the Green Climate Fund to mitigate future crises.
Yellen is the second senior Washington official to visit Beijing in the last two months. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing in June, making him the highest-ranking Washington official to visit Beijing in almost half a decade. He met President Xi Jinping and foreign minister Qin Gang.
