It’s complicated: What Trump means for India-US ties

Understanding what Donald Trump means for India requires an examination of what Trump seeks for America, and placing India, which is an important actor for US strategy but not as indispensable as some in India like to believe, within that framework.
But understanding what Trump means for India also requires an examination of what Washington DC means for New Delhi, what makes it possible for New Delhi to achieve those aims, and placing the possible orientation of Trump administration, within that framework.
A Trump administration, by being less publicly interventionist in domestic politics and more sensitive to some internal security concerns, is likely to create political space for New Delhi to continue deepening ties with the US. This is especially so in the backdrop of increasing political pressure on the government from its own base to rethink its approach to the US because of perceived — not necessarily real — slights from the Democratic administration.
At the same time, a Trump administration may make it difficult for Delhi to extract the real economic and technological goods that it needs from the US in order to meet its developmental and strategic goals. It may also force a set of uncomfortable conversations around the issue of “religious freedom”.
Whether the greater political space will lead to greater convergence on economic and technological goals, or whether the discord on economic and technological matters shrinks the political space is the key question in the next four years.
Examine what Trump wants to do, or at least has said he wants to do, in his second and final term in office.
One, Trump will use whatever levers the US state has on US capital to get it to stay at home, especially if that capital has the potential to generate jobs on a mass scale. This is the fundamental driver of Trump’s America First approach. What unifies his broad coalition, from conservatives to protectionists to libertarians to unions, is this commitment to bring investment and jobs to America. For India, one of the key objectives in the relationship with the US is to actually get American capital, for that is seen as a key medium to generating jobs, ensuring technological innovation, building capabilities, and bridging the economic divide with China.
Joe Biden had similar aim of boosting domestic manufacturing, and he had much greater success on that front than Trump did in the first term. But the Biden administration also recognised that diversifying supply chains required other nodes of production. The outcome may not have been immediately on the scale India would have hoped, but no US administration has sent as strong a signal to US capital to invest in India, including in critical sectors, as the Biden administration did.
This is the first area where Trump’s broad world view and India’s interests clash. Since Trump wants the rest of the world to buy what is made in America, he would be extremely reluctant to open up tech transfer and see money flowing to India. And he would want Indian capital to come to America instead of the other way round. This doesn’t mean that there is no meeting ground; there is enough capital hunting for enough geographies. But it is a challenge and Trump is not a man with patience for the grey zones that exist in international political economy.
Two, Trump doesn’t like it when America has to buy from the world. And if someone is actually selling to America, without America being able to do the same, on the same terms, in the same quantities to that country, it is unacceptable to the President-elect. Trump’s fascination with tariffs stems from this simple proposition, and the belief that American producers have suffered due to the fact that American consumers have been pampered in a way that has only benefited China.
In the past three decades, despite recent protectionist measures, India opened its markets. It has been more comfortable buying from outside because it can see that this helps not just consumers but also eventually enables greater production and exports. And the best example of this story has been the US. India sells to the US way more than it buys from the US today — even as it unfortunately has to buy way more from China than it sells to it.
This is exactly what Trump doesn’t like. Sectoral terms of trade, or Trump’s fascination with Indian duties on one product (remember Harley Davidson) based on who he has spoken to him last and what he recalls at that moment, is a symptom. The problem is deeper. Trump has a unidimensional view of global trade; India has a more nuanced view. Trump dislikes it when he thinks someone is being able to take advantage of him, and a trade deficit with India makes him think that. India will dislike it when the US seeks to alter the terms of this arrangement.
Third, Trump’s evangelical base wants the room to continue its global proselytising missions. The person who is likely to be the next chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, has his own concerns and objectives related to “religious freedom” in India and restrictions on funding for, say, churches. And groups which are going to enjoy unparalleled access to the White House will have strong views on either real or perceived attacks on the right of Christian minorities, including in say a context such as Manipur where religion is not necessarily the best frame to view the internal conflict.
The Indian political dispensation is clear that such Christian networks represent a threat to “Indic civilisation”. There is a deeply embedded belief that conversion, often through inducement and fraud, is rampant in some parts of India and that foreign-funded NGOs are the medium through which this happens. And there is clarity, especially in the home ministry, that this cannot be allowed.
This then represents another broad area where the two sides may have difficult conversations, just because both are coming to it with their own ideological world view, interest groups and constituencies, and fears and objectives.
Bridging the possible gap in these areas, where Trump will be far more forceful than he was in his first term, in the context of his anyway chaotic managerial style and diplomatic recriminations through social media, depends on the kind of political space that both governments have in dealing with each other.
On this front, Trump offers an advantage to Delhi. The fact that both the Republican strategists and Indian security establishment have the same two core adversaries — China and Islamist terror — helps. The fact that Trump’s ecosystem and Modi’s ecosystem worked closely together during three major crises India faced — Doklam in 2017, Pulwama in 2019, and Ladakh in 2020 — helps. The fact that the Republican set-up will be happier to outsource parts of managing the rest of South Asian security to India than Democrats were helps. The fact that the Republican base and the BJP base have a shared animosity towards the same set of actors — global liberal media, global civil society, human rights organisations — and a shared belief in what is coming to be known as the broader world view of national conservatism helps.
And the fact that Modi and Trump have a personal equation, they have common friends in Benjamin Netanyahu and MBS and MBZ, that top Indian officials and Trump’s possible top-level cabinet and national security officials already know each other, and that there are both visible and invisible business links between elements close to the two regimes, will all help.
Instead of a somewhat over the top celebratory air that seems to permeate in Indian public sphere at the moment about Donald Trump’s win, there needs to be a more nuanced approach. Trump’s win can help deepen ties with India by giving Modi space to continue on the strategic path that benefits India. But Trump will also make it difficult for India to achieve those very strategic objectives that makes the US a key partner. Get ready for an interesting, albeit unpredictable, future.