Former US secretary of state John Kerry says India made pretty powerful offering at ET WLF 2025

Former US secretary of state John Kerry voiced concern over President Donald Trump alienating allies like India, but hoped that both nations will resolve their differences as New Delhi has made a "pretty powerful offering" on the proposed bilateral trade deal.

"My hope is that we'll resolve this dispute. I think India has made a pretty powerful offering frankly," he said the ET World Leaders Forum, while referring to reports of India offering zero tariff on a number of US imports as a "big shift."

Kerry, the 68th secretary of state under former President Barack Obama, was also the 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate.


During an interaction titled 'America, India, and the Shifting Global Order' with ET's Sruthijith KK, Kerry said giving ultimatums without any genuine diplomatic efforts doesn't exhibit greatness. "We are concerned. This struggle between President Trump and PM Modi is unfortunate. Great nations don't necessarily exhibit greatness by giving people ultimatums all the time without sort of a genuine diplomatic effort to try to find common ground and do things through the normal course of business."


He also highlighted the role of Indians globally and Indian Americans in particular in the US economy. "In the United States, certainly you see Indian-American leadership at FedEx, Google and Microsoft, and it's extraordinary the input that India is having in our country itself."

"We need to... recognise and honour the impact of Indians in the US. I wonder whether we truly appreciate in this country what an extraordinary moment it is, and when we might ever have this kind of situation where so many of the top global tech firms are led by Indian origin executives."

Kerry hailed India's ambitious renewable energy goals and said nuclear power must be part of the solution. He was also of the view that talk of US decline is "greatly exaggerated," quoting the Mark Twain witticism.

"Every country has problems, and they differ country to country, whether social, cultural or physical in one way or another, lack of infrastructure, whatever it is, opportunity, education."

"But the world has been moving. If you look at the big picture, despite these challenges, the world has been moving very rapidly towards a transformation... we're just exploring in a whole new way, new opportunities. And that excites me, and the US is leading in so many parts of that, publicly, the private sector," he said.


He also addressed the notion of US exceptionalism. "When I ran for president, I remember saying in my acceptance speech... we're not exceptional because we run around beating our chest and telling everybody we're exceptional," he said. "We're exceptional when we do exceptional things, like putting $30 billion into AIDS efforts in Africa, or when we are the first on the ground to help with an emergency where something terrible happened."

On the Russia-Ukraine issue, he said he is confident of a path to end the conflict. "I am optimistic that it can be done. I am glad President Trump is trying. I am glad that he's focused on it. I think that's very, very important for whatever reasons they may be."

Kerry also spoke on the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Even as he referred to Palestinian armed outfit Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel as "grotesque," he felt that the current Tel Aviv government does not believe in a two-state solution, which posed a "big problem for the world."