Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is a making a big mistake in failing to send a State Department deputy to join Ivanka Trump in India this week.
On Tuesday, Ivanka Trump will join hundreds of business leaders at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad. But in an apparent Tillerson rebuke to the White House, Ivanka won’t be accompanied by a senior State Department official, as is the custom.
According to a senior State Department official who spoke to CNN, “No one higher than the deputy assistant secretary is allowed to participate. The secretary and his top staff have insisted on approving all travel — even the most minute details. They won’t send someone senior because they don’t want to bolster Ivanka.”
If this is true, Tillerson needs to wake up. Deputy assistant secretaries are relatively low-ranking officials in the State Department and certainly too low to be the chief U.S. representative at the summit.
It’s not complicated.
Tillerson’s first responsibility is to the service of effective U.S. diplomacy and he’s actually done okay thus far. As I’ve noted, improving U.S.-India relations are one of the early successes of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Yet by snubbing a summit that his department is helping to organize and put on, Tillerson now threatens to undo much of his good work by sending a message of utter disrespect to the Indian government.
The apparent failure here is also an act of economic stupidity.
After all, while U.S. exports to India grew from just under $17 billion in 2007 to $21.6 billion in 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic reforms offer great potential for U.S. companies in the years ahead. In addition, as India’s more than 1.3 billion people grow wealthier, they’ll offer a vast new market for higher-value U.S. goods and services.
You know, a market that will offer well-paid and sustainable U.S. jobs here at home. As I say, this isn’t complicated stuff, the Indian opportunity must be wholeheartedly embraced.
Still, what’s most amazing here is that Tillerson seems to be acting as he is for the sole reason that he’s grumpy with the White House.
Give me a break.
America’s relationship with India is too important to be sacrificed at the altar of playground politics. Tillerson should send his deputy, John Sullivan, to join Ivanka in Hyderabad.
