Scale, not tariffs, will shape India’s trade leverage: Sunil Mittal

As global trade tensions intensify and tariff barriers re-emerge as policy weapons, India’s sheer market size and sustained infrastructure push will ultimately determine its bargaining power with the world, Bharti Enterprises founder and chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

Speaking during a panel discussion, Mittal argued that in an era of rising protectionism, countries that can scale consumption, production, and technology will command leverage in trade negotiations. “In the end, you have to make yourself stronger to get the best deal,” he said. “We have seen how China was not pushed back by the US the way they wanted to, and they quickly backed off. We have to make ourselves big.”

Mittal’s remarks come amid renewed uncertainty in global trade flows, with tariff threats once again reshaping supply chains and forcing companies and governments to reassess their exposure to single markets. While he dismissed the idea of a complete breakdown in US trade ties, he cautioned that the world would adapt if tariffs became “completely untenable”.

“About 83 per cent of world trade moves away from the US between everybody else,” Mittal noted. “I don’t think it will ever come to a point where you don’t trade with the US. But if it does become untenable, the world will react and find other markets and other places.”

India’s Leverage: Vast Market, Growing Production Base

At the heart of India’s advantage, Mittal said, lies its scale. With nearly 1.5 billion people, India is not just a fast-growing consumer market but also an emerging global production hub.

“We are a market for everybody in the world,” he said. “It’s 1.5 billion consuming, hungry young Indians taking more products and services every day. At the same time, India is producing for the world. That gives us tremendous leverage to get the right deals.”

However, he stressed that leverage would only materialise if India could scale up manufacturing and technology to create exportable surpluses, a process that China undertook over decades. “What India really needs to do is scale, scale its technologies, scale its production, and get to a point where it has consumer surpluses to send to the world,” he said, adding that this would inevitably take time.

Infrastructure as a Leverage: Physical and Digital 

Mittal credited the Indian government for recognising early that building competitiveness is both capital-intensive and time-consuming. Traditional infrastructure, roads, ports, airports, and railways, require “10, 15 or even 20 years and hundreds of billions of dollars”, he said.

What helped bridge that gap, according to Mittal, was India’s early bet on digital public infrastructure. “The government recognised that you could build a digital highway in the world order,” he said. “And then provide enough energy to fire it, because there’s no point having a digital highway with no energy.”

The creation of India’s digital stack, linking citizens to banking, health, and public services, provided what Mittal described as a “cushion” while hard infrastructure caught up. “On top of that digital highway, you dropped a digital stack to connect everybody. This allowed India to wait while manufacturing and physical infrastructure were being built,” he said.

The result, he argued, is a steadily strengthening economy. “Year after year, India is getting stronger. My belief is that eventually India will get a fair deal, even from the US. I remain confident.”

Trade Shocks: An Opportunity, Not a Distraction

Mittal warned against over-focusing on short-term tariff shocks at the cost of long-term competitiveness. “There is too much noise on the here and now,” he said. “We are putting too much energy into mitigating the pain instead of using these defining times to build new competitive advantages.”

He pointed to sustainability and affordability as areas where India could leapfrog, citing investments in circularity and energy independence. “The more you invest there, the more it is good for the planet and good for the wallet,” he said. “But it also builds independence, not just in energy, but in trade.”

Reducing dependence on imports by converting domestic waste into productive inputs, he added, could fundamentally alter India’s trade equation. “If you start producing with the waste created in India, you depend less on global trade. And the same logic will apply to other countries as well.”

Drawing on examples such as Aadhaar, digital payments, and large-scale elections, Mittal said India has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to execute complex transformations at a population scale. “India has proven that when things come together, it can leapfrog significantly,” he said.

As tariffs rise and global trade becomes more fragmented, Mittal’s message from Davos was clear: India’s response should not be defensive. Instead, scale, infrastructure, both physical and digital, and long-term competitiveness will determine how well the country shapes its place in the evolving global order.