INSIDE STRATEGY: White House pushes BOLD pricing plan

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:01]Secretary of State Marco Rubio expected to visit India next month as the United States looks to reset US India relations following a trade deal reached in February to remove tariffs and expand trade. This will be the secretary's first trip to India as Secretary of State. He recently met with India's foreign secretary in Washington to discuss bilateral ties. Joining me now, India Index founder and CEO and Vogal Group managing principal Samir Kapadia.

[00:00:29]Samir, uh, good morning to you. So, this trip does coincide with improving US ties with Pakistan, which is involved in negotiating and of course mediating the Iran uh, standoff right now. Your reaction?

[00:00:44]>> Well, good morning, Cheryl. Look, this is going to be an important trip for the secretary for three reasons. One, he's got to keep India accountable on all of those commitments that they made to purchase US energy products, agricultural, etc. So that's going to be a core focus of the meeting. The second's going to be around critical minerals. This is a president in the United States that's keenly focused on sort of getting away from the Chinese supply chain on critical minerals. India could play a very valuable role in that particularly in processing and it's likely uh that Secretary Rubio will bring that up. And the third and this is more geopolitical. You're right. There's a bit of paranoia that India has every time the United States gets close to to Pakistan. Whether that's rational or not, I won't judge. But certainly the United States wants India to know that they are our partner. They're strategic and any conversation with Pakistan about remediating efforts in the street of Hormuz or Iran is really pragmatic and not a fundamental. So this is an important meeting. Well, go back to the critical minerals uh side of this for just a moment because I think we need to kind of reiterate here uh the fact that that is a key component and why you're seeing the secretary of state make his first trip as secretary of state to India. It seems to me the critical minerals is a bigger piece of this. How does that negotiation and that conversation go? Uh because that is something that we have had an issue with with regards to China. India can fill that void.

[00:02:13]I it's going to be sort of the the the challenge of of our generation. Um you know, for the past 75 years, the United States and Europe has sort of relegated these what I'd call more uh grittier industries to China and we saw us lose all that control. So now it's this realignment. Where can we find allied partnerships to regain control of that supply chain? The G7 is going to be a critical component of that. But you need emerging markets that have a lot of labor and good cost arbitrage to meet that demand. Indonesia, India could also play fantastic role in that. I think India wants to be an active partner in critical minerals. They've got a long ways to go mainly because it's really tough to invest in India still. If you want to set up a business there, you want to invest capital, you want to take capital out, you want to get through their tax code, it's still very challenging. So I think the United States wants to say, "Hey, look, India, if we want to be critical minerals partners, let's make this easier." And by the way, it's our advantage.

[00:03:16]>> Well, the Australians would are are are very excited to partner with the United States on critical minerals. Uh but you mentioned the G7. I want to talk to you about that because the EU and the US did launch a partnership on critical minerals. The partnership is focusing on cooperation across full supply chain including exploration, extraction and recycling.

[00:03:38]But is that the most critical component in your opinion here? You know it's it's more of like the what I'd call the market and economic points of it. But the the the reality is pricing I think Cheryl is the biggest issue right now.

[00:03:53]Critical minerals um you know they're volatile and there's a lot of choke points. Just look at what's happening in the trade of hormuz on on energy. We've been facing the same dilemma in critical minerals for decades. And and frankly, it happens every time China confuses the marketplace. I mean, they keep announcing every now and then some sort of export control. Hey, we're not going to export X for a certain amount of time. Well, that doesn't do anyone any good. Just look what's happening right now with the fertilizer industry. And there's a lot of inputs that go into that which are a result of these sort of export controls. The biggest problem in critical minerals is pricing. And right now the president alongside the work secretary Rubio, uh, Vice President Vance, and even folks at XM like chairman John Yavanovich, what they're trying to do is create reference pricing to say all of us countries are going to come together and come up with a medium to say this is the rational price for X critical mineral. That is, I think, the core focus of the White House over the next few months. And frankly, they're getting pretty far into that process. So I I I that's where that's where my eyes are right now.

[00:04:56]>> Yeah. No, absolutely. And it is again to your point uh am I mean all these global tensions uh you know the the focus. Uh let's talk about another domestic issue here because a new Harvard Harris poll reveals that likely voters in the upcoming midterms are evenly split among Democrats and Republicans. The poll also shows that party loyalty remains overwhelmingly high. Nearly all voters backing their own party's candidates.

[00:05:21]Independent voters also closely divided but there's a slight edge towards the Democrats. Samir, I want to get your thoughts because broader picture stepping back. There is concerns on the domestic front because of the conflict with Iran. We are seeing gasoline prices were at 422 a gallon just this morning.

[00:05:38]Diesel, jet fuel. This is all of this kind of the key component as we look at this polling going into the midterms.

[00:05:47]Look, I think the president's going to do what the president does best and and it's get deals done. You know, remember there was transformational change in this administration which a lot of people and I mean Democrats and Republicans were excited about. It was to say look all around the world these countries have essentially taken advantage of the US economy for decades.

[00:06:05]They want all the market access but they don't want to accept our products or allow for our companies to participate in their markets. I think this summer and up into the midterms, the Trump administration and Republicans are going to show that all those commitments are turning into receipts that these countries are making those investments in the United States. They're buying the right agricultural products. They're buying the right energy commodities, etc. All of that is going to be a boon for the economy and it's going to really impress, I think, the American electorate that this is a president that delivered. I think that's got to be the focus. You know, you can talk about social issues, you can talk about other sort of geopolitical issues. We got to focus right now on what's at home and that means US exports and US investment.

[00:06:47]That's the focus.

[00:06:48]>> Absolutely. Hence the question. Thank you so much, Samira Kapatia. Great to have you on the program. We'll be right back everybody. You're watching Mornings with Maria. We're live on Fox Business.