Expert Bio

Inu Manak is a fellow for trade policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). An expert in international political economy, Dr. Manak’s research focuses on U.S. trade policy and the law and politics of the World Trade Organization. At CFR, she researches and writes on trade politics and institutions, dispute settlement, and development. She is regularly called on to speak about the USMCA, WTO reform, subsidies and industrial policy, the intersection of trade and climate, and executive overreach on trade. In 2021, she published The Development Dimension: Special and Differential Treatment in Trade (Routledge Focus) with James Bacchus. She is currently writing a book about U.S. trade policy’s bipartisan shift toward protectionism.  

Previously, Dr. Manak was a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies and a junior visiting fellow at the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. 

Dr. Manak is a book review editor for World Trade Review and associate editor of the International Economic Law and Policy Blog. She is also a participating scholar in the Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative at American University. She serves on the advisory board of the Center on Inclusive Trade and Development at Georgetown Law. 

Dr. Manak received a PhD in government from Georgetown University, an MA in international affairs from American University’s School of International Service, and a BA in political science (First Class Honors) from Simon Fraser University. 

affiliations

  • World Trade Review, book review editor
  • International Economic Law and Policy Blog, associate editor
  • Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative, participating scholar
  • Center on Inclusive Trade and Development at Georgetown Law, advisory board member

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At the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore last week, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the United States would be expanding its defense partnership with India. His statement was in line with U.S. policy over the last two decades, which, irrespective of the party in power, has sought to cultivate India as a serious defense partner. The U.S.-India defense partnership has come a long way. Beginning in 2001, the United States and India moved from little defense cooperation or coordination to significant gestures that would lay the foundation of the robust defense partnership that exists today—such as India offering access to its facilities after 9/11 to help the United States launch operations in Afghanistan or the 123 Agreement in 2005 that paved the way for civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries. In the United States, there is bipartisan agreement that a strong defense partnership with India is vital for its Indo-Pacific strategy and containing China. In India, too, there is broad political support for its strategic partnership with the United States given its immense wariness about its fractious border relationship with China. Consequently, the U.S.-India bilateral relationship has heavily emphasized security, with even trade tilting toward defense goods. Despite the massive changes to the relationship in the last few years, and both countries’ desire to develop ever-closer defense ties, differences between the United States and India remain. A significant part of this has to do with the differing norms that underpin the defense interests of each country. The following Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) memos by defense experts in three countries are part of a larger CFR project assessing India’s approach to the international order in different areas, and illustrate India’s positions on important defense issues—military operationalization, cooperation in space, and export controls—and how they differ with respect to the United States and its allies. Sameer Lalwani (Washington, DC) argues that the two countries differ in their thinking about deterrence, and that this is evident in three categories crucial to defense: capability, geography, and interoperability. When it comes to increasing material capabilities, for example, India prioritizes domestic economic development, including developing indigenous capabilities (i.e., its domestic defense-industrial sector). With regard to geography, for example, the United States and its Western allies think of crises, such as Ukraine, in terms of global domino effects; India, in contrast, thinks regionally, and confines itself to the effects on its neighborhood and borders (and, as the recent crisis with Pakistan shows, India continues to face threats on its border, widening the geographic divergence with the United States). And India’s commitment to strategic autonomy means the two countries remain far apart on the kind of interoperability required by modern military operations. Yet there is also reason for optimism about the relationship as those differences are largely surmountable. Dimitrios Stroikos (London) argues that India’s space policy has shifted from prioritizing socioeconomic development to pursuing both national security and prestige. While it is party to all five UN space treaties that govern outer space and converges with the United States on many issues in the civil, commercial, and military domains of space, India is careful with regard to some norms. It favors, for example, bilateral initiatives over multilateral, and the inclusion of Global South countries in institutions that it believes to be dominated by the West. Konark Bhandari (New Delhi) argues that India’s stance on export controls is evolving. It has signed three of the four major international export control regimes, but it has to consistently contend with the cost of complying, particularly as the United States is increasingly and unilaterally imposing export control measures both inside and outside of those regimes. When it comes to export controls, India prefers trade agreements with select nations, prizes its strategic autonomy (which includes relations with Russia and China through institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS), and prioritizes its domestic development. Furthermore, given President Donald Trump’s focus on bilateral trade, the two countries’ differences will need to be worked out if future tech cooperation is to be realized.