Should India prioritise Global South trade over Western economies?

India has deepened diplomatic and trade ties with developing nations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, positioning itself through its 2023 G20 presidency as a 'Voice of the Global South.' At the same time, India walked away from the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a major Asia-Pacific trade pact, in 2019, and its largest trading partners by value remain the United States and the European Union, not Global South economies. The debate is whether India should now actively reorient trade policy toward the Global South, or continue prioritising the West where the bulk of trade value currently sits.

India withdrew from RCEP negotiations in November 2019 after years of participation, citing a worsening trade deficit with the bloc's other members as a group (which grew from roughly $7 billion in 2004 to $78 billion in 2014 across the RCEP partner countries), concerns about a flood of Chinese manufactured imports, and the impact on India's dairy and steel sectors from proposed tariff cuts.

Since then, India has built out other forums for Global South engagement, including the International Solar Alliance and its 2023 G20 presidency, which it used to push developing-country priorities onto the global agenda. Despite this diplomatic emphasis, India's largest two-way trading relationships by value remain with the United States and the European Union, and India has pursued separate bilateral trade negotiations with both rather than rejoining a broader regional Asian trade architecture.

• Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America represent some of the world's fastest-growing consumer markets, and early, deep engagement could position Indian businesses advantageously as those economies expand.
• Closer Global South ties support India's broader diplomatic goal of leadership among developing nations, reinforcing its claims for institutions like UN Security Council reform.
• Diversifying away from heavy reliance on Western markets reduces exposure to any single bloc's economic or political shifts.

• The US and EU remain India's largest trading partners by a significant margin, and major trade and investment relationships are not easily or quickly redirected without short-term economic cost.
• India's withdrawal from RCEP reflected genuine, specific economic concerns (trade deficits, import surges, sector vulnerability) that would need to be resolved before deeper Global South trade integration could proceed on similar terms.
• Western markets currently offer higher-value, technology-intensive trade and investment opportunities that critics argue India's economy needs more than expanded trade volume with developing peers.

China has pursued a more aggressive Global South trade and infrastructure strategy through its Belt and Road Initiative, building deep economic ties across Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the past decade, a scale of commitment India has not matched. Most middle-income economies, including Brazil and Indonesia, similarly balance deeper South-South engagement with continued reliance on trade with the US, EU, and China, suggesting India's current dual-track approach is closer to the regional norm than an outlier.

Global South leadership has been a consistent theme of the current government's foreign policy messaging, including during its G20 presidency, with broad domestic political support. The RCEP withdrawal itself drew support across the political spectrum, including from domestic industry and farmer groups wary of import competition, making this less a partisan divide and more a debate over sequencing and economic strategy.

This question sits on the Economy axis (openness to trade integration generally) and the Nation axis (orientation toward South-South solidarity versus traditional Western economic partnership).