NEW DELHI: While American President Donald Trump’s focus is on the $45 billion trade deficit with India, a paper released Monday estimated that the US “quietly rakes in” $80-85 billion from India through education, digital services, financial operations, royalty on intellectual property, and defence exports.“These massive earnings don’t show up in the narrow goods trade statistics. When you factor them in, the US isn’t running a deficit with India at all – it’s sitting on a $35-40 billion surplus,” trade researcher GTRI said, while suggesting that govt should negotiate hard. The report comes at a time when India and the US are engaged in talks for a bilateral trade deal amid repeated attacks by Trump, who at one point claimed that America’s trade deficit with India was to the tune of $100 billion. It said one of the biggest beneficiaries is the US education sector, where Indian students end up spending an estimated $25 billion annually on university education. The likes of Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft mop up $15-20 billion a year through app sales, cloud services, and ad revenue, gaining from “limited local rules on data & taxation” in the country.Further, GTRI pegged revenues of consulting firms and investment banks at $10-15 billion and estimated that US pharma companies raked in close to $2 billion via patents, drug licensing arrangements, and tech transfer. Similarly, American auto majors earned between $800,000 and $1.2 billion in licensing and technical services. Another $1-1.5 billion flowed to Hollywood and American streaming platforms.
