If President Donald Trump’s first term is any guide, India may appear well placed to deal with his second stint at the White House. But the past is not necessarily a guide to the future, and Delhi will have to take a close look at the implications of Trump’s ambitious agenda for the second term.
To be sure, there is a good rapport between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Trump. Modi’s key advisers will be familiar with many of the new officials who are likely to staff the senior positions in the Trump Administration. And there are many convergences between the worldview of the Modi government and the Trump team.
The problem, however, comes from the radical nature of Trump’s policy framework that breaks away from the many familiar features of the global economic and political order.
Dealing with Trump’s second term is not just about finding policy fixes for the many divergences that are bound to emerge between Delhi and Washington. It demands coming to terms with Trump’s plans to overhaul the global order and the US role in it.
That is compounded by two additional factors. One is Trump’s intensely transactional approach. The other is the strengthening of America’s position in relation to Europe and China, thanks to Washington’s recent impressive economic performance. Together they turn America into a more powerful interlocutor than before.
Five themes of concern for India stand out from Trump’s worldview.
First is Trump’s plan to “dismantle the regulatory state,” dramatically downsize the bureaucracy, and make it easier for US capital to invest and develop new technologies. The familiar conservative critique of the bureaucratic state has been reinforced by Elon Musk’s plans for bold downsizing of the government. If the liberals wanted to turn America into a EU-like regulatory state, the Republicans want to return to the traditional American policies in favour of capital and technological innovation.
Both Wall Street and Silicon Valley have been irritated by the expanding regulations under the Biden Administration and fully back Trump’s plans to lift all constraints on US techno-capitalism. Trump’s plans to reduce regulatory constraints on AI, space, crypto, energy and other areas is likely to accelerate American technological lead over the rest in the near term.
Other powers, including India, with technological ambitions of their own, might have to rethink their models of state-led technology governance if they don’t want to fall too far behind the US. Boosting the Indian private technology sector and facilitating its deeper collaboration with the accelerating US technology giants must be a high priority.
Second, Trump is determined to re-industrialise America. He has argued repeatedly that globalisation has played havoc with US manufacturing and the industrial working class. If the Biden Administration has focused on massive state subsidies to restore manufacturing to the US, Trump’s preferred instrument is tariffs. Trump has called “tariff” the most beautiful word in the English dictionary, other than ‘love’ and ‘faith’.
The president-elect has talked of a 10 per cent tariff on all imports and a special 60 per cent on Chinese goods. Trump sees Europe an equally challenging problem. India has had a bitter taste of Trump’s relentless focus on market access and trade deficits in the first term. Since the US is now India’s most important commercial partner, Delhi will have to do more than tinkering with its policies to deal with Trump’s emphasis on fair trade.
Third, immigration has been one of the issues that has propelled Trump to his historic political comeback in this election. Although his anti-immigration rhetoric has caused much concern in India, Trump has sought to differentiate between “legal” and “illegal” immigration. Trump has acknowledged the need for more engineering talent, especially from India, that is so critical to sustaining American technological leadership.
India will have a deep interest in contributing to the US debate on separating the “bad” immigration from the “good”. It is already taking back illegal Indian immigrants deported from the US. Delhi may also want to look beyond the H-1B visa framework to develop a more sustainable connection between India’s technical talent pool and the US plans for accelerated technological innovation.
Fourth, Trump’s relationship with China and Russia will be of special interest to Delhi. It was under the first Trump administration that the Quadrilateral framework was revived in 2017. There is no reason to expect that the second would dilute its commitment to limit Chinese power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific.
The problem, however, will be with the Republican strategists’ impatience with Delhi’s reluctance to make the Quad a robust regional “security coalition”. Many of them worry that the Quad has become an organisation with a wide-ranging non-military agenda and is losing primary focus on producing a military balance against Beijing. Addressing this US discomfort on the Quad will be a major issue for Indian policy.
Trump’s focus on ending the war in Ukraine and his willingness to explore a potential deal with President Vladimir Putin would ease some of the American pressures that India has had to face in the last few years on isolating Russia. There is much speculation about Trump abandoning Biden’s policy of fighting both Russia and China and finding a way to separate them. Negotiating a new “grand European bargain” between America and Russia has not been easy; if Trump does the impossible, it will suit India’s geopolitical calculus on Eurasia.
Trump’s bid to end war in Europe also opens the door for India to make more active contributions to peace in Ukraine. Even more important, as Trump puts pressure on Europe to defend itself, Delhi has every reason to intensify its security partnership with key European powers as well as, collectively, with Brussels.
Finally, the Biden years have seen a significant expansion of defence and high technology cooperation between Delhi and Washington. Sustaining and expanding this under the Trump Administration will be a key priority for Delhi. This would also involve a fresh bargain between Delhi and Trump’s Washington that will ask “what is in it for the US?”.
Over the last two decades, the US has operated under the assumption that boosting India’s capabilities is in America’s self- interest, especially in balancing China. But Trump is likely to demand some Indian “pro” for American “quid”. The idea that favours can’t be one-sided but mutual is at the heart of Trump’s statecraft. India could find itself on a steep learning curve as it figures that there may be no “free lunch” under Trump’s second term. Delhi might have to “give something” to “get something”.
(C. Raja Mohan is a visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore and a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express)
