New Delhi, Feb. 8 -- India has struck another trade deal-this week with the US. Call it a deal with President Donald Trump if you like, but the bottom line is this: In the space of a fortnight, New Delhi has sealed two free trade agreements (FTAs), with the US pact, for all practical purposes, an interim one.

And there are linkages between the two FTAs.

For one, India-European Union (EU) FTA appears to have provided the momentum for the US to announce a deal with a country Trump once derided as a "dead economy". By now, everyone knows that the India-US deal was actually sitting on Trump's table for many weeks when India and the EU clinched the "mother of all deals".

Perhaps it was the optics that finally nudged things along-the image o...