By Ramanath Manchala
3India’s trade discourse has long focused on tariffs, incentives, and export promotion schemes. Yet the persistence of a widening trade deficit particularly in sectors critical to domestic manufacturing points to a deeper and more structural challenge. The issue is not merely the volume of imports, but the absence of a unified, intelligence-led framework capable of understanding and responding to how global trade is increasingly shaped by state subsidies, supply-chain control, and information asymmetry.
India’s current trade toolkit relies heavily on reactive instruments such as anti-dumping duties and safeguard measures. While necessary, these mechanisms are inherently backward looking. They activate only after domestic industries have already suffered price suppression, margin erosion, or capacity loss. In a global trade environment where distortions are embedded deep within value chains, such responses are no longer sufficient.
The Case for a National Trade Intelligence Architecture
What India requires is a National Trade Intelligence Department a permanent, data-driven institution that treats trade as a strategic system rather than a series of isolated disputes. Trade intelligence, unlike trade defense, is proactive. It focuses on anticipation, early warning, and strategic alignment with industrial policy.
A modern trade intelligence architecture must operate across three core dimensions.
Import intelligence should leverage AI and advanced analytics to continuously monitor price distortions, embedded subsidies, routing anomalies, and sudden import surges at granular HS-code levels. This would allow policymakers to detect unfair pricing and structural dumping well before domestic manufacturers experience irreversible damage.
Export intelligence must go beyond export promotion and systematically map market-access barriers, non-tariff restrictions, retaliatory risks, and evolving global demand patterns. Such analysis would help identify sectors where Indian manufacturing has latent competitive advantages but lacks scale, financing, or policy support to expand.
Trade network intelligence is equally critical. Modern trade distortions are rarely bilateral. They often operate through triangulation across FTA partners, rules-of-origin leakage, and complex re-routing of goods. Mapping these networks would allow India to understand how structural distortions propagate across regions and sectors, and where policy intervention would be most effective.
From Intelligence to Industrial Strategy
Trade intelligence must not remain an analytical exercise, it must directly inform policy action. When integrated effectively, these insights can guide the Centre and States in designing sector-specific manufacturing and export frameworks. This includes calibrated PLI enhancements, targeted infrastructure investments, logistics optimization, and alignment of power and land policies with sectoral needs.
Crucially, trade intelligence should also shape industrial finance. By identifying sectors with structurally high import dependence and strong substitution potential, policymakers and financial institutions can channel lower-cost credit, priority lending, and risk-sharing mechanisms toward areas where rapid manufacturing scale-up is both feasible and strategically necessary.
Institutional Design and Governance
For such a system to function, it must operate as a continuous intelligence engine, not an episodic regulatory body. Institutional ownership should be shared between the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce, reflecting the intersection of trade, fiscal policy, and industrial strategy. This architecture must be supported by integrated data pipelines from customs authorities, ports, logistics networks, power pricing systems, and global trade databases.
A Strategic Imperative
As global trade becomes increasingly weaponized, economic resilience depends on information dominance. Countries that can see trade distortions early, understand their structural origins, and align policy responses accordingly will shape the next phase of industrial competitiveness.
For India, institutionalizing trade intelligence is no longer a theoretical reform, it is a strategic imperative. A sovereign, intelligence driven trade architecture is foundational to protecting domestic manufacturing, strengthening export competitiveness, and securing long term economic resilience in an increasingly fragmented global economy.
(The above article is authored by Ramanath Manchala, Strategy and Transformation Consultant. Views are his personal.)
Last Updated on: Friday, January 30, 2026 11:41 am by Economic Edge Team | Published by: Economic Edge Team on Friday, January 30, 2026 11:41 am | News Categories: News
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