Global South Must Unite For Fair Trade, Tech Collaboration, Says Jaishankar At UN Meet

Global South countries need to reduce dependence on any single supplier or market by building resilient supply chains and boosting South-South trade, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said at a high-level meeting of Like-Minded Global South Countries on the sidelines of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, PTI reported.

Jaishankar said the economies on the Global South need to come together to promote fair economic practices, trader and technology collaborations.

Jaishankar said, "We meet in increasingly uncertain times, when the state of the world is a cause for mounting concern for member states," PTI said.

The Global South, he said, in particular, is confronted with a set of challenges, from pandemic shocks and wars in Ukraine and Gaza to extreme climate events, volatile trade, uncertainty in investment flows and interest rates, and the 'catastrophic' slowing down of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda.

He noted that the Global South is grappling with a complex set of challenges, including the lingering effects of the pandemic, ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, intensifying climate-related disasters, unstable trade conditions, fluctuating investment flows and interest rates, and a deeply concerning slowdown in progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals.

"In the face of such proliferation of concerns and multiplicity of risks, it is natural that the Global South would turn to multilateralism for solutions," Jaishankar said as per PTI.

"The building blocks of the contemporary order are starting to come apart. And the cost of delaying much-needed reforms is today starkly visible," Jaishankar said.

He said the Global South must present a united front in demanding a level playing field in the international system.

Jaishankar's statements come after the US President implemented a slew of tariffs across economies with India being charged a 50% rate, a 25% base rate, and 25% as a penalty for buying Russian crude.

Notably, the Trump administration last week also proposed a new $100,000 annual fee for H-1B visa applications, marking a big shift in US skilled worker immigration policy.

The new measure requires U.S. companies to pay $100,000 per year to sponsor each H-1B worker, a sharp increase from previous fees that typically ranged from $1,700 to $4,500.