On July 31, President Donald Trump announced 25 per cent tariffs on Indian imports into the USA. Subsequently the tariffs were hiked to a cumulative rate of 50 per cent. On 20 September, President Trump announced a $100,000 fee for H1B visas, of which Indian professionals are the primary beneficiaries. India is but one extreme example of the foreign policy of President Trump in his second term. While his MAGA agenda is clear and evident and his insistence on protectionism is implied in it, he seems to be oblivious of international undercurrents and is exhibiting insensitivity towards the impact of American decisions on the fabric of world affairs.
For countries like India having close ties with the USA the current administration has become a challenge. What President Trump is doing, essentially, is to disturb friendly diplomatic relations with other countries that were cultivated over decades, on the pretext of tariff rates. The Indian exception is the levy of exorbitant visa fees, to stop Indian professionals from entering the US. However, no nation can survive in isolation in today’s hyper globalized world. Everyone is interconnected. To put economic and bilateral relations at stake for the sake of an individual issue defies the statesman’s logic of keeping national interests paramount while cultivating friendships in the ever-changing international politics.
In fact, what President Trump is doing is the exact opposite to what American Presidents had been doing in the 20th century, that is engaging the world and resisting the isolationist foreign policy of the 19th century. Presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had seen the merit of participating in world affairs. Wilson went ahead and helped in creating the League of Nations after World War I to mitigate animosities in Europe. It was in the same spirit that Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman architected the United Nations, and the Marshall Plan was devised and executed to monetarily help Europe rebuild itself after the catastrophic World War II.
The logic behind engaging the world especially in the post-WW II period was straightforward. It allowed the country a chance to condition international politics and organizations such as the UN to suit its own specific goals. This is the gist of bilateral and multilateral negotiations, to find the best possible outcome for oneself. One can only influence an international organization or treaty only if one participates in it. In fact, the point of engaging the world and not to reduce foreign affairs to mere transactions is based on a two-fold argument according to former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – for any nation to remain pre-eminent, it is important to stay engaged in world affairs, and, protectionism and isolationism will not serve the purpose of remaining influential, and will reduce its preeminent status eventually.
The crux of the argument is that if one does not engage with other countries in a positive way, the eventual fall out will only harm the country. For the US, which is the largest economy in the world, reducing itself to an inward-looking economy will erode its advantage and scope for trade with other countries, as eventually everyone will look for alternative avenues. Moreover, one must also keep in context that the US became a world leader only by keeping avenues of international trade open and free. However, what President Trump is doing is the exact opposite of what Secretary Rice is arguing for. In his second term, he is neither making friends nor influencing people in the bilateral and multilateral arena. Many of his decisions look like self-goals.
The administration that Trump inherited from Joe Biden was on the economic recovery path in the post-Covid era and relations with friends and allies were robust even with the counterviews on the Ukraine war. Business was being conducted as usual. If the USA wanted to keep other countries’ influence at bay in Asia and beyond, they were largely successful. Engaging friends in Asia under the QUAD apparatus was largely productive. However, the Trump administration’s insistence on reciprocal tariffs on one nation after the other does not seem to be serving the diplomatic goals of the US, let alone providing the economic windfall that it promised. What it has achieved is to increasingly narrow the bilateral and multilateral leeway with countries like India.
The argument of a protectionist economy that the Trump administration has been promising for long, to ensure employment for Americans and keeping American wealth within its borders, would have worked in an era of limited international trade and for a country which was not a bedrock of ‘free trade’ discourse, or which had become a 30 trillion-dollar economy on the back of extensive international trade. The US though is deeply entrenched with the international economy and by waging trade wars with countries, it is only going to disturb the balance of a system which for all intents and purposes had worked for it. As far as India is concerned, Trump’s words and actions seem to be coming from a far baser place. It is not the trade imbalance but his desire to be acknowledged as the mediator between India and Pakistan during Operation Sindoor.
But here too Trump is not aware of the history of the acrimonious struggle between India and Pakistan, where ‘mediation’ has been pointedly opposed by India. That the Indian government would have said no to the mediation is a no-brainer, but what it shows is the lack of statesmanship within the Trump administration. It is one thing to be a leader of the leading country in the world, but quite another to upend decades-old redlines, which cannot be palatable to any country. It is for this lack of understanding of the sensitivities of other countries and people that the Trump administration is facing stiff opposition from around the world.
In fact, it is being hoped by many within and outside the US that this is a blimp in the bilateral timeline of India and America and not a permanent fixture, because it will only undo the hard work done by a number of leaders in both countries to bring Indo-US relations to where they are today. India is a proud civilizational state with a fundamental belief in an independent foreign policy and multipolarity. Our foreign policy underlies the belief of human and national dignity and peaceful coexistence. Overt coercion as a psychological tool to ‘cut a deal’ with India is not the most logical solution simply because national interest and welfare of the people is and will remain the top priority for the Indian government. President Trump should see the point that while he may court Pakistani army chief Munir to get lucrative deals for his family, PM Modi is cut of a different cloth and is far more consequential in geopolitics because he represents 1.4 billion people and the fourth largest economy in the world today. Trump cannot act like a colonial officer, because India is not a colony anymore. The USA would have reaped greater benefits with India on its side.
(The writer is assistant Professor at Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi, and volunteers with Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies, a non-partisan think tank based in New Delhi)