Raghuram Rajan calls US HIRE Act a bigger ‘threat’ to India than H

Former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan has warned that the proposed Halting International Relocation of Employment (HIRE) Act poses a bigger concern for India than the $100,000 fee increase to the H-1B visa program.

In an interview with DeKoder, Rajan said the HIRE Act could impose tariffs on outsourced services, not just goods, which would directly affect India’s IT and services exports.

“One of our biggest concerns is not so much the goods tariffs but whether they try and find ways of imposing tariffs on services. This is a threat,” he said.

Rajan added that Congress is still debating the HIRE Act. “How that will be implemented is anybody’s question, but this creeping of tariffs beyond goods to services to Indian visitors into the US through the H-1B route – these are all concerns,”