In the News
By Piyush Verma
As decarbonization extends beyond electricity into transport, manufacturing, steel, and chemicals, the share of world trade untouched by clean energy accounting is likely to shrink. So the useful question is not where clean trade begins and ends.
By Medha Prasanna
As countries race to connect renewable generation, expand transmission, and meet surging demand from data centers, electricity grids are being built at unprecedented speeds. Building quantum-safe cryptography while equipment is being designed and procured is far easier than retrofitting it later.
By Anit Mukherjee
In the 20 years since BRICS was formed as a loose agglomeration of developing countries, the New Delhi Summit demonstrated that its value lay in providing a space for some overlapping approaches to economic management and development. The challenge is one of coordination, reconciling national priorities with the wider objectives of balanced trade, efficient cross-border payments, and effective development finance.
By Pietro Zecca
As countries work to reduce their exposure to China-centered supply chains, India is building strategically motivated partnerships across Europe, notably with Italy. It may arguably become India's most interesting clean energy partner in the region.
By Marta Bengoa
Tariffs can be withdrawn by proclamation as quickly as they were imposed, and the September 8 measures may well be traded away in the review that begins next summer. The conclusion Canada has reached about the reliability of its largest customer will take considerably longer to reverse.
By Shailesh Mishra and Uma Vatsa
What quantum computing could change, if it works, is the ceiling on what the decades after that can build, because the limits on ammonia, energy storage, and electricity transmission are set by chemistry we cannot currently calculate. Those limits are already known. Describing them precisely enough to hand to a machine is work that can start now.
By Jeffrey D. Bean
While the Pax Silica initiative has been criticized for being non-binding, unfocused, U.S.-centric, and inconsistent in its membership, it is nonetheless the best-placed plurilateral initiative to advance what has been a bipartisan consensus in the United States on U.S. technological leadership.
By Raul Alfaro-Pelico
When the African Union took its permanent member seat at the G20 in 2023, it was read across the continent as a long-overdue correction. Three years on, the question is narrower and harder. What does the seat actually buy?
By Caroline Arkalji and Piyush Verma
Green iron could become an important energy security and industrial competitiveness issue. Reducing dependence on imported coal, building domestic clean industrial capacity, and preparing for future export markets could all strengthen India’s long-term position.
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About ORF America
The Observer Research Foundation America (ORF America) was established in 2020 as a non-partisan and nonprofit public policy institute in Washington DC. An affiliate of the Observer Research Foundation, India's leading public policy think tank, it produces research and analysis on security, economics, technology, and energy; convenes policy discussions in the United States and around the world; and develops networks of policy professionals.
The U.S.-India Partnership: Strengthening Cooperation
Special Report
Produced by the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and ORF America
By Dhruva Jaishankar
For India, navigating U.S. export controls remains a challenge 20 years since the civilian nuclear agreement was signed.
This special report explores the opportunities of a U.S.-India Strategic Energy and Industrial Partnership.
Special Report
By Aditya Ramji
By Ashita Jain
The proposed India-U.S. trade deal discussions are distinct from traditional FTA negotiations, for they resemble a strategic economic partnership being negotiated under tariff pressure and in pursuit of an increasingly elusive sense of predictability for Indian exporters.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
What’s the latest on U.S.-India relations? Dhruva Jaishankar answers.
By Dhruva Jaishankar and Jeffrey D. Bean
Earlier this month, India was among the first countries to receive expanded access to Anthropic's Claude Mythos large language model, but the White House decision to block all foreign access to Anthropic’s new Mythos and Fable models via export control elevates concerns regarding reliability of U.S. partnership and AI dependency.
By Vishal Manve
India’s nuclear future is increasingly unfolding along two parallel tracks, one rooted in indigenous strategic capability and the other in internationally integrated commercial innovation. For Washington, understanding and engaging both will be central to the next phase of U.S.–India civil nuclear cooperation.
By Ammar Nainar
The Iran War has already had a severe impact on the United States’ arms and ammunition inventory. The new demands for arms and munitions come just as India has begun to improve its domestic weapons manufacturing and promote defense exports. In the coming years, this offers opportunities for India and the United States to cooperate in defense manufacturing at scale.
Explaining India: Understanding Public Policy
By Dhruva Jaishankar and Ammar Nainar
Once a quiet backstage function of the armed forces, defence diplomacy has emerged as one of India's sharpest tools of statecraft. From joint exercises and training missions to disaster relief and maritime surveillance, India's military now operates far beyond the battlefield: building trust, shaping partnerships, and projecting the country's strategic interests on a rapidly shifting global stage.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
In its diplomacy, India has reprioritized its near neighborhood, extending financial, developmental, and trading benefits to other South Asian countries and revitalizing more productive regional institutions.
By Andreas Kuehn and Trisha Ray
To examine the policies and their challenges, this chapter draws from in-depth, expert interviews with current and former government officials, trade associations, industry decision-makers, and technology experts, as well as a systematic document analysis of publicly available government and corporate documents.
U.S. Engagement with the World: Alliances, Trade, and Technology
By Dhruva Jaishankar
A strong transatlantic bond that for almost eight decades had evolved into a highly integrated defense and economic system among the world’s leading industrial economies – institutionalized under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and G7 – now faces new stresses.
By Linda Nhon and Andreas Kuehn
Trump 2.0’s overall policy directions in critical and emerging technologies will likely hew to common expectations. The details, however, of what technologies the new administration will prioritise and how actions, such as tariffs and export controls for example, will affect the United States’ (US) innovation and technology leadership remains underexplored.
By Jeffrey D. Bean
While the Pax Silica initiative has been criticized for being non-binding, unfocused, U.S.-centric, and inconsistent in its membership, it is nonetheless the best-placed plurilateral initiative to advance what has been a bipartisan consensus in the United States on U.S. technological leadership.
By Raul Alfaro-Pelico
When the African Union took its permanent member seat at the G20 in 2023, it was read across the continent as a long-overdue correction. Three years on, the question is narrower and harder. What does the seat actually buy?
By Sapna Suresh
It is not just on trade and market access that Washington and Brussels are competing for favor in India. Their competition extends to defense and security and to migration and mobility.
By Dhruva Jaishankar
Despite Europe’s push for more military self-sufficiency amid tensions with the United States, questions remain as to whether Europe’s political leadership, domestic politics, and social conditions can facilitate the development of true security and strategic autonomy.
By Holly Stevens and Siddharth Sharma
As demand for electric vehicles, battery storage, clean energy systems, and advanced technologies continues to accelerate, Australia’s resource base and mining history, Canada’s resource base as well as its mining and industrial capabilities, and India’s market scale and commitment to value-added manufacturing could support diversification across multiple stages of the value chain.
The Global South: Identifying a Common Agenda
"Rebalancing Globalization: Perspectives from the Global South" attempts to provide a framework for the next phase of globalization that is rebalanced and sustainable and can address issues that matter to the Global South.
Edited Volume
By Anit Mukherjee, Dhruva Jaishankar, Alan Gelb, Pamla Gopaul, Marta Bengoa, Shayak Sengupta, Aude Darnal, Elizabeth Sidiropoulos, Udaibir Das, Veronica Jijon, and Lorrayne Porciuncula
Editors: Anit Mukherjee and Dhruva Jaishankar
Multilateral Reform: Reinvigorating International Institutions
By Dhruva Jaishankar & Tanvi Madan
It’s Time for the Group to Prioritize Its Security Agenda