JUSTER: JUST ANOTHER NAME FOR US ENVOY TO INDIA OR MORE?

President Donald Trump’s top adviser on international economic issues, Kenneth Juster, could land up in Roosevelt House, home to the US ambassador to India, if his detractors in the White House prevailed in the high-stakes infighting currently underway between proponents and opponents of globalism.

Ambassadorship to India is currently on the “back-burner” of the administration, according to multiple sources, especially on account, in their view, of its preoccupation with ongoing controversies about the Russia probe.

Speculation has continued, but with waning intensity in recent weeks.

Shalli Kumar, a Chicago businessman who was Trump’s largest Indian American donor, emerged as a frontrunner, but was eclipsed by talk about Ashley Tellis, a widely respected Indianborn expert, and others.

Juster, a lawyer who previously served as deputy secretary of commerce — a position roughly the equivalent of minister of state in India — is aligned with the globalists, who favour a larger US involvement in the global economy, according to Politico.

Politico was told by an administration official that Juster was being considered for “for an ambassadorship, possibly the US ambassador to India”.

Juster, a lawyer from Harvard, is an old India hand, having launched the High Technology Cooperation Group to promote trade in sensitive dual-use goods and technology, as deputy secretary of commerce in the George W Bush administration in 2003.

Indian officials refused to comment on or off the record, but generally speaking New Delhi prefers a US ambassador with access to the White House, and Juster has that.