Trump 2.0 has begun on a tempestuous note. Compared to the narrow margins of his 2016 victory and 2020 defeat, this time round the Trump victory was quite thumping. And since being sworn in for the second term of his Presidency, Donald Trump has lost no time to unleash his agenda like a global bully gone berserk. From declaration of a tariff war in global trade and deportation in shackles of hundreds of foreign nationals calling them illegal immigrants to the televised bullying of Ukraine President Zelenskyy and several other visiting leaders and making frequent outrageous statements like turning Gaza into an obscene Trump-themed tourist destination emptied of Palestinians and incorporating Canada as the 51st state of the US - Donald Trump has kicked up a veritable global storm.
In his first term Trump had surfaced as a toxic symbol of white supremacist misogynistic politics with a strong Christian fundamentalist streak. He is now following up on the aggressive nationalist overtone of his slogan of MAGA (Make America Great Again). Tariff and deportation are his favourite weapons to bolster his 'nationalist' image by projecting himself as the saviour of American trade and American labour from so-called 'unfair' trade barriers and 'immigrant job-snatchers'. In this project, Trump has found a close ally in the world's richest person, ironically an immigrant American citizen of white South African origin, Elon Musk. Unlike the Modi-Adani nexus, where Modi prefers to keep the partnership secret, Trump brazenly flaunts his alliance with Musk, acknowledges Musk's massive corporate contribution to his campaign and has reciprocated by putting Musk in charge of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. And now as Musk's shares have begun to crash, Trump has jumped to his rescue, asking Americans to support Musk's electric vehicle model Tesla.
While Trump's domestic agenda has been on predictable lines, it is in the foreign policy domain that Trump appears to be making some drastic shifts. The televised showdown with Zelenskyy was the most pronounced example of this shift when Trump accused Ukraine of gambling with a possible third world war and appeared ready to risk a rupture with Europe and rock the NATO alliance in pressuring Zelenskyy to accept a so-called 'peace deal'. It is common to come across commentators seeing Trump's bullying tactics as just part of his maverick style, and some even see it as Trump working at the behest of Putin. In other words, these commentators view the Trump phenomenon as a freak development, something not organically connected to the historical trajectory and current priorities of US imperialism.
A closer look would however reveal that what Trump is trying to do is to concentrate on China as the current number one strategic target of the United States. The Cold War era when the US had the USSR as its principal adversary has long ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO was a product of the Cold War period and should have also been dismantled after the disintegration of the erstwhile USSR. Europe and the USA however maintained this military alliance to contain Russia and also serve the common hegemonic interests of the Western world. But the dominant opinion in the US ruling elite now believes that the challenge from China has reached a level where encircling and containing China must take precedence over other strategic imperatives. Hence the desperate American attempt to 'untie' Russia from China and declare the BRICS 'dead'. Meanwhile, importantly there is continuity in US policy on Israel, with Trump continuing to back Israel to the hilt in its genocidal occupation of Palestine and escalating ruthless persecution of pro-Palestine voices in the US.
Where does India figure in the unfolding Trump agenda? Over the last two decades and especially since the signing of the Indo-US nuclear deal, India has considered itself a key strategic ally of the US. Since his ascent to power in 2014, the Modi government has tried to sell the illusion that there has been a qualitative jump in India's international stature and particularly in India's friendship with the United States, as well as a special intimacy with fellow supremacist Trump. Trump is now openly snubbing Modi and humiliating India at every opportunity. The treatment meted out to Indian citizens who were found residing in America without necessary documents has been among the harshest and most humiliating. Trump has also accused India of being a tariff abuser in Modi's presence and is now showcasing the drastic import duty reductions being announced by the Modi government as an American victory.
The US surely values India as a major market and as a strategic ally in its policy of containing China. But the Indian hype over the rise of the Indian-American community and the so-called special bond between Trump and Modi has clearly been exposed as wishful Sangh-BJP propaganda. India had a trade surplus with the US, and Trump clearly wants to reverse that and wants a much bigger market access for American products in the Indian market. This has alarming implications for Indian exports to the US, especially in pharmaceutical and IT sectors and also for India's domestic producers including those in agriculture. If the highly subsidised agricultural produce of the US is allowed to swamp the Indian market, it will be a death blow to Indian agriculture. The Modi government has already announced huge concessions to the American auto industry, especially for Musk's electric vehicle venture Tesla. India's Telecom giants, Jio and Airtel, are signing accords with Musk's telecom arm SpaceX to sell Starlink internet service in India.
While the USA's continental neighbours in North and South America are standing up to the Trump administration's tariff threats and arrogant posturing, the Modi government has adopted a policy of quiet capitulation. At stake is not just India's national pride as a sovereign country which attained independence through protracted anti-colonial resistance, but also India's vital economic interests and strategic autonomy to pursue domestic and foreign policies needed for India's own development. The Trump Presidency represents an aggressive trend of unilateralism that has begun to defy the entire post-war framework of multilateralism beginning with the United Nations. The whole world will have to find an answer to this growing American threat to global peace and stability, sustainable development and climate justice.
