Abhijit Bhattacharyya | Trump’s Targeting of China is ‘Course Correction’ by US

The on again-off again lightning moves by America’s President Donald Trump have sent all nations across the world into severe turbulence. This article had to be modified several times as each day brought a new twist to the ongoing tariff drama. Creation and destruction could happen simultaneously, and one could never be sure that the final outcome would not be the opposite of what was predicted.

The fast-changing decisions by POTUS have left the whole of Asia shaken -- and particularly India and China. One recalls the Bengali saying “Bhuter Mukhe Ram Naam”, which implies that the impossible or the bizarre could well become reality. Bhut (the Ghost) cannot utter the name of a noble soul like Lord Ram of mythology because axiomatically the Bhut/Ghost is far from noble and defies anything that could characterise lofty thoughts and examples of royal divinity.

The analogy appears more than apt today as the congenitally hostile China, through its embassy in New Delhi, has given a clarion call to India “to stand with it to combat the situation arising from the US tariffs”. That is interesting because exports from Beijing will now attract hefty duty to enter the American market. This happened after the unpredictable POTUS once again unilaterally stayed his own one-way tariff imposition order on 70 out of 78 targeted nations of the globe, but excluded China. China does not figure on the list of 70 nations where tariffs are postponed for 90 days. Instead, Chinese goods will now face a massive 245 per cent impost (scaled up from 145 per cent), thus delivering a severe blow to President Xi Jinping as Mr Trump goes ahead with his “Make America Great Again” mission.

President Trump wants to ensure every possible economic, commercial, geographical and financial sector to reverse the Chinese dictator’s Belt and Road Initiative, launched 2013. For that, he seems prepared to even set world markets on fire.

The unilateral import duties imposed on 78 countries ranged from a high 50 per cent on Africa’s tiny landlocked nation of Lesotho (2.2 million population; high 20% unemployment rate) to 10 per cent on an assorted group of 21 countries, including the UK, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia. Almost all agree that POTUS should or could have avoided such drastic action.

Yet, with a speed that took everyone’s breath away, and in a touch of the unpredictability that marked Delhi’s onetime Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-1351 AD), POTUS stayed his own tariff order several times before the latest revocation on 70 countries on April 9, thereby living up to his reputation for erratic ways. But there may well be a “method in his madness”.

It is of course undeniable that the People’s Republic of China has enormously damaged the United States for more than 40 years. Successive US rulers from the 1980s onwards are totally responsible for their gross misreading of the Chinese psyche and the plots hatched by Beijing. China took full advantage of America’s greed for cheap goods and escaping responsibility of labouring to upgrade its traditional tech advantage. America did realise this, but only too late, and Donald Trump has the unenviable job of undoing the failures of his predecessors. And despite the unpredictability and erratic behaviour, his reading on China cannot be faulted.

The buck had to stop at some point. Faced with an annual $296 billion bilateral balance of payments deficit, a wholesale flight of its core industrial production base and investment to mainland China, constant espionage, theft of high-tech, illegal immigration and sabotage, Mr Trump was forced to act. And he has undoubtedly put President Xi Jinping in a jam. What will Beijing’s dictator do now. The Dragon saw the writing on the wall way back in October 2024, when the leaders of India and China met at Kazan in Russia, on the sidelines of the SCO summit. Delhi had to be befriended, so that Beijing had a freer hand to tackle Donald Trump in case he stormed back to power in Washington.

India too has been at the receiving end owing to damage wrought by China over the past seven decades, first on territory and now trade. Some figures provided by the Indian embassy in Beijing offer enough evidence. “By 2008 China emerged as India’s largest (one-way) goods trading partner… In 2015-2022 India-China trade grew 90.14% (again in favour of Beijing) and by 2022 the total trade figure reached $136.26 billion". India’s paltry $17.49 billion exports to China was overwhelmed and swept away by Dragon’s exports of $118.77 billion, allowing it a $101.28 billion profit, leaving India in the red.

Whereas the US loss is $295 billion plus, India’s loss is minus $105 billion annually. China has royally mauled both India and the US for years. However, the US has fortunately never faced the ignominy of loss of territory and death of soldiers on its soil. India suffered irreparable damage, along with irreversible territorial loss. It has faced numerous incursions, killings of soldiers inside its own land, negative bilateral trade running into billions of dollars, incredible espionage over land and sea and a joint China-Pakistan forced occupation of a part of India’s Jammu and Kashmir. Mysteriously, the Dragon mesmerised Lutyens’ mandarins into silence over its lost territory to allow China to make fat profits in trade.

Today, however, China needs India to take on the US. Beijing now describes India-China relations as “cooperative pas de deux” between the Dragon and the Elephant for mutual success. Beijing wants a “Dragon-Elephant tango” because it is now on the backfoot amid Trump pressures. It fears its aggressive diplomacy and trampling all over Asia, Africa and Europe is being resolutely opposed by an equally aggressive American President who is pushing his MAGA agenda.

Besides India, Beijing approached Australia to “work together to counter US tariffs”. Australia remembers Chinese mischief in the past, and flatly refused. “We aren’t going to hold China’s hand,” it declared.

Understandably, global multilateralism isn’t just on the wane, it is already wrecked, at least for now. All nations are busy doing bilateral deals to protect their own interests as China’s financial and economic imperialism has been rudely exposed. Whether India plays ball with the West or not, it must firmly reject all efforts by China to penetrate Delhi’s decision-making circles any longer. Let’s not get swayed by Beijing’s charm offensive over the 75-year diplomatic relationship. When in trouble, the Dragon calls Delhi. But the memory of the Galwan Valley in June 2020 will not be so easily forgotten.

The writer has served as a chief commissioner of customs in Hyderabad and Delhi