Good morning. The artificial intelligence summit is over, but discussions about the AI industry continue in Mumbai this week at the annual technology and leadership forum organised by national IT trade body Nasscom. I will be speaking with Sanjiv Puri, managing director of tobacco-to-hotels conglomerate ITC, at the event on Wednesday. I look forward to meeting some of you there, and will report back with news and interesting trends. Also, my colleague Andres Schipani and I will be answering your questions about India’s trade deal, geopolitics and economy on Friday, February 27, at 5.30pm IST in our Ask an Expert series. Send us your questions here. 

In today’s newsletter, India’s National Green Tribunal, which adjudicates environmental cases, has given its nod to a massive project on the island of Great Nicobar. But first, (groan!), the tariff news cycle continues — and the US Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday is not all good news for India.

Tariff trauma

An immediate impact of the ruling was to prompt the Indian and US governments to push back their ongoing trade talks. (A delegation was scheduled to be in Washington this week.) According to officials in New Delhi, the countries have agreed to regroup after studying the judgment. In the meantime, Trump has announced a new blanket tariff rate that he quickly increased to — at time of writing — 15 per cent.

The tariff structure puts all countries on an equal footing. On paper, India’s tariff burden is lower than before, and it is among the bigger beneficiaries (see chart). But parity with China is not necessarily good news. Smartphone exports to the US, which increased by 200 per cent between April — November 2025 are now India’s largest category. Apple’s exports of Indian-made iPhones constitutes a substantial chunk of this. The strategic price advantage that India has over China will be lost if tariffs are the same for both countries. While Apple is expected to continue to expand its manufacturing operations in India, ministry officials worry that in the near term it will be able to increase capacity in China more quickly.

Other categories of products face similar challenges. Exporters of textiles, garments and footwear, among others, had been discounting their products since August last year, when Trump imposed reciprocal tariffs on India, to hold on to their US customers while waiting for a deal. They had just reworked their numbers barely a fortnight ago after the terms of the interim deal were announced. Now they are back at the drawing board, without much clarity on what the future holds and how the competitive landscape will evolve. It is frustrating, but as an Indian exporter told me, the industry has to learn to live with the fact that tariff uncertainty is here to stay whether we have a deal or not. 

The deal under negotiation could help carve out space for at least some Indian sectors. The diamonds and precious stones industry, for example, for which the US is a large market, is hoping it will be able to hold on to the zero-tariff status laid out in the interim deal even when Trump imposes blanket tariffs. Does that sound feasible? It’s hard to tell. If the last year has taught us anything, it is that everything is on the table. Nothing is too outrageous or too illogical.

Do you think the new tariff rules are good for India? Or do they matter at all? Hit reply or email us at indiabrief@ft.com

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3. FedEx sues Trump administration for tariff refunds.

4. How tech turned against women.

5. Iran and Russia have a secret deal for shoulder-fired missiles.

6. Japan is mining Pacific Ocean mud for rare earths to counter China’s chokehold.

Development > Ecology

India’s green tribunal has cleared a Rs810bn ($9bn) integrated infrastructure development plan in Great Nicobar, an ecologically fragile island in the Indian Ocean. The clearance not only threatens ecosystems on the island but also sets a precedent for projects of “strategic importance” in environmentally sensitive regions. This week’s order is a setback for environmentalists, tribal rights advocates and the scientific community.

The Great Nicobar project includes construction of a container terminal, a power plant, an international airport and a township. The government argues that the island’s location is of immense strategic and commercial value due to its proximity to the maritime corridor of the Malacca Strait. It also maintains that the project is necessary to counter other countries’ presence in the Indian Ocean and strengthen India’s security.

The project, which has been in the works since 2021, will use nearly 20 per cent of the land on the island. It secured environmental and coastal regulation zone clearances in 2022. The tribunal’s order last week upholds those approvals.

Great Nicobar, which is located at the southernmost tip of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago, is home to more than 20,000 coral colonies and supports an extraordinary diversity of flora and fauna. The island is crucial for the survival of several species, including the Nicobar megapode, a large-footed bird, and the giant leatherback turtle. 

It is also home to the Shompen and Nicobari tribes. Some tribal leaders have alleged they were pressured into signing declarations stating they had no objections to the project. These indigenous communities depend on the island’s forests and coastal ecosystems for their subsistence. 

The government’s plan is to create alternative zones — essentially creating new protected areas for wildlife in other islands. It’s safe to say that transplanting complex ecological elements from their original habitats to alternate locations is more likely to fail than succeed.

The proposed development looks sure to destroy the island’s environment and its current way of life. This is not merely a plan to leverage a geographic location for limited commercial or security purposes. It envisions a sweeping transformation, with some 130,000 people to be employed on Great Nicobar by 2052, swamping the current population of 8,500. Development versus environmentalism has been framed as an age-old conflict, but in the Great Nicobar project the fight seems to be over.

Go figure

This is a shocking chart that I discovered in my colleague Tej Parikh’s piece on the effect technology is having on our brain. Brain health has been on a downward trajectory in the past 20 years as our use of the internet and mobile phones has risen. Technology is straining our brain health, capacity and agility.

Your view

Last week, I wrote about what India hopes to accomplish from the AI summit. India Brief reader Mastufa Ahmed had this to say:

“Perhaps the question isn’t whether India will catch up to the US or China in frontier models, but whether it can lead the third way. Focusing on regional language AI and low-compute, high-impact solutions for the global south, India could dominate a different market entirely.

“I agree that diplomatic theatre won’t build the infrastructure. The success of this summit should be measured by how many of those 100+ countries actually buy into an Indian-led AI ecosystem six months from now, rather than just signing a declaration today.”

(Edited for length and clarity)

Quick question

Speaking of technology, do you think India should ban social media for teenagers? Tell us here.

Buzzer round

On Friday we asked: Which country will vote in a referendum in June this year to cap its population at 10mn for the next 25 years?

The answer is Switzerland.

Aniruddha Dutta was first with the right answer, followed by Ram Teja, Himanshu Sharma, Sumanasa Bhat and Srinath V. Nice to see some new names. Congratulations!

(I am yet to compile this month’s leaderboard. Apologies!)

Thank you for reading. Today’s India Business Briefing is edited by Mure Dickie. Please send feedback, suggestions (and gossip) to indiabrief@ft.com.