Reservations had been expressed during his long and successful campaign over Mr Donald Trump’s unpredictable character, his convictions for felony, his liking for autocrats and his fitness for the office of the President of the United States. It is not with a modicum of fear over a second Trump term possibly sowing global volatility that the world has looked on at his triumphant march back to the White House.
Truth to tell, the world will have to learn to live with Trump’s America and India is one country in Asia that would be looking forward to that in the belief that the benefits could outweigh the challenges while expecting some relief from the censorious eyebrow-raising ways of the liberals over India’s patchy involvement with Canada over Sikh separatists resident there.
The warmth and enthusiastic cordiality of the Trump-Modi relationship that marked their ties in his first term could define how the ties go and whether the US will continue to endorse cultivating India as a counterweight to Beijing. It is also a quirk of diplomatic history that India’s relationship with a Republican US President in place has invariably been warmer than with a Democrat in the White House, but only after the caustic Richard Nixon era.
Issues are bound to crop up given Mr Trump’s pronouncements during his testosterone-laced campaign against a woman candidate in Kamala Harris. While everyone, especially China, is expecting a trade war to break out over tariffs that seem inevitable, India too will be forced to deal with Mr Trump if his regime does impose tariffs as he often threatened to do when quoting the Harley Davidson bike episode.
Illegal immigration, the most aggressive part of Mr Trump’s campaign, is certain to crop up as Indians constitute a fair number who risk taking the Mexico route. But that, as Mr Trump himself will know, is not something Mr Modi’s government can do much about. India’s concerns will be more about how conservative the H-1B visa process may get in his presidency as India’s export of IT brains is integral to its status as an IT-enabling power.
India would be hoping to bolster its continuance as a strategic partner of the US and derive benefits like a favourable visa programme for genuine skilled workers and, of course, a more liberal US approach to visas for Indian students whose presence is an economic force for the host country. Transfer of high technology to sustain India’s status as a defence materials buyer and partner would also be an objective given stronger recent ties.
If Trump’s USA, fired by an anti-China sentiment, moves along a curve of aggression to Beijing in trade, India can hope not only to suffer less from high tariffs that may specifically target Chinese goods but also to benefit from any manufacturing or assembly lines moving to India from out of China as seen in the case of Apple phones.
India has made progress as an attractive investment destination and increased FDI is something the country always hopes to get as much as active FIIs bringing in money to sustain its stock markets that have moved up to record levels in the post-Covid years. That will not change because of the election result that may have been fuelled by a people tired of overseas imbroglios, illegal cross border migration and an excessive pandering to “woke” sentiments.
