Trump 2.0 and the new world disorder

India Today

25-06-2025

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated Nov 18, 2024)If genius is the ability to make the complex simple, then Donald Trump's historic comeback as the 47th President of the United States can only serve as the best example of that. At his victory speech in Florida, Trump outlined his agenda quite plainly, but effectively. 'The core is common sense,' he said.advertisement'We wanna have borders. We wanna have security. We wanna have things to be good and safe. We want a great education. We want a strong and powerful military and, ideally, we don't want to have to use it. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. We will make America safe, strong, prosperous, powerful and free again.'At the end of his speech, he declared, 'We make promises. We keep promises.' Few political leaders have such a straightforward and uncomplicated world view, which seems to have struck a chord with the US electorate. They have voted him back with a handsome majority, ignoring the many felonies, including sexual abuse, various federal courts have charged him with.
Many of Trump's promises are similar to the ones he had made to win his first term as president between 2016 and 2020. He could implement only some of them, that too with limited success. It was one of the reasons why President Joe Biden managed to thwart his bid for a second consecutive term. But that interlude proved short-lived as Trump returns reloaded and raring to reset the American dream when he formally assumes office on January 20, 2025.advertisementMuch of the world waits with trepidation for, as Ashley Tellis, senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a top expert on Indo-US relations, puts it, 'We are going to have a tumultuous presidency. Trump is going to come with much greater confidence and with an army of acolytes and foot soldiers who regard him as an apostle of a revolution. They are determined to take an axe to the roots. He will do things no previous American president would have even contemplated doing. There will be serious perturbations in terms of the traditional American role in hegemonic stability.'In his second term, as in his first, Trump's domestic agenda will be his most compelling concern, and his foreign policy will be subservient to the radical reforms he has in mind for his country. During his campaign for re-election, Trump's team brought out a manifesto called 'Agenda 47', which listed a range of major policy initiatives, domestic and foreign, that he would implement, even if it meant trampling on the powers of the US Congress.These include a radical downsizing of government bureaucracy and restructuring of administrative appointments, to fire those he calls 'rogue bureaucrats' and make way for those aligned to his policy. In the US Department of Justice, for instance, Trump has pledged to appoint 100 US attorneys to fight, among other things, anti-conservative bias and left-leaning law firms. On crime, he has promised to be tough and bring in the death penalty for human traffickers, drug dealers and cartels.advertisementTrump's plans in other spheres have elicited equal consternation domestically. In education, for example, among the initiatives listed is a plan to get rid of existing accreditors for colleges and universities and replace them with ones more in line with the Republican party values. Professor Sumit Ganguly, a senior fellow at the Hoover Foundation at Stanford University, describes much of what Trump is planning as 'a domestic Reaganite revolution on steroids'.Ronald Reagan, one of the best recent Republican presidents of America, brought about a major economic revival during his tenure between 1981 and 1989 by lowering taxes and freeing the economy of bureaucratic constraints, besides undertaking some path-breaking initiatives to tackle the Cold War. But while Reagan recognised there was a diffusion of power and there were things that the president could or could not do, Trump, Ganguly fears, 'is likely to steamroller those kinds of normative institutional procedural constraints'. The same is likely to be true of his foreign policy agenda as well, as the new president will try to ram through his disruptive agenda.advertisementTrump's transactional approachBut what is the world according to Trump? Simply put, it is ensuring America's interests first with those of every other nation coming a very distant second. Trump is unabashed about his transactional approach to key issues and is convinced that America's decline was because it ended up paying everyone else's bills to maintain the global order while the US itself got diminishing returns. As he puts it, 'these guys ate our lunch'.Despite the American economy doing well under Biden, Trump's campaign theme of high retail prices and low job growth got him the support of the working-class American, who felt the pinch the most. Equally resonant was his amplification of the perceived threat posed by immigrants, especially illegal ones, who would take away American jobs. Among the first things he promises to do when he takes charge in January 2025 is to execute 'the largest deportment program' of illegal immigrants ever undertaken.More than anything else, however, Trump is hell-bent on dismantling America's international statecraft which, after World War II, fashioned alliances and institutions that would foster a liberal order to enable peace and prosperity for much of the world while ensuring US supremacy and idealism. Post-war US presidents pursued an expansive foreign and trade policy that pushed for greater globalisation through openness to trade and investments and even intervening militarily against forces that threatened world peace.advertisementTrump wants to do just the opposite with his 3-D policy of disrupt, disengage and deglobalise. Shades of that agenda played out in his first term itself, as he locked into a trade war with China, pulled out of major international pacts, including the 2014 Paris Climate Change agreements, and antagonised NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) allies by saying the security blanket that the US provided them was no longer free and that they should up their own defence spending to meet the costs.In his second term, Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, says, the big concern broadly will be 'his volatility and transactional approach. Trump's volatility will be even harder to deal with. One day he could be competitive with China and tomorrow he could strike a deal'. This Trump presidency comes at a time of two major international challenges—the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Regarding the first, Trump boasted he would get Russian president Vladimir Putin to strike a deal on Ukraine and end the war within days of taking over. He said the same of the Gaza conflict, though with less conviction. His stance with his NATO allies is likely to remain the same—he will continue to ask them to cough up more for their security.advertisement'Trump does not want to assume any international leadership role if it involves a price tag that the US has to pay for,' says Tellis. He believes that Trump is likely to ask hard questions over sustaining major US policies, including defending Taiwan and could even swap it for a big deal with China. Madan's main concern is that the US may not want to get entangled in such conflicts and end up saying, 'Russia, you handle Europe, and China, you handle Asia. It doesn't suit India's interest for an American president to withdraw completely from Asia.'What many experts deeply fear is the possible decline in US power should Trump carry his insular and isolationist agenda into his second term. This could, in the long term, lead to greater world conflict. Condoleezza Rice, a key policy-maker in the George W. Bush presidency, without directly referring to the Trump administration, in a perceptive article in Foreign Affairs before the election results, warned: 'The new Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—populism, nativism, isolationism, and protectionism—tend to ride together, and they are challenging the political centre.Only the United States can counter their advance and resist the temptation to go back to the future. But generating support for an internationalist foreign policy requires a president to paint a vivid picture of what that world would be like without an active United States. In such a world, an emboldened Putin and Xi, having defeated Ukraine, would move on to their next conquest.... American leaders should remind the public that a reluctant United States has repeatedly been drawn into conflict—in 1917, 1941 and 2001. Isolation has never been the answer to the country's security or prosperity.'Trading punchesTrump, though, is not one to heed such wise counsel. Ever since his first term, he has been convinced that others have gleefully exploited America's generosity for too long and that it was payback time now. Top among the list of policy changes he is contemplating is a drastic rise in tariffs (the most beautiful word in the dictionary, in his book). Doing so is likely to destroy the global trading system, particularly the effectiveness of the World Trade Organization, but Trump doesn't care because he believes it does not serve America's interests. He intends to erect protectionist walls around America, which could well mark the beginning of the end of globalisation.Trump's prime target is China, but so is India, which he calls 'the Tariff King'. China has had a favourable trade balance with the US for long, which rankled Trump even during his first term. Even though he pushed China hard to set the imbalance right, it remains skewed in China's favour. Of the $575 billion worth of goods trade with the US in 2023, China enjoyed a favourable balance of $279 billion. Trump has vowed to impose an across-the-board hike of 60 per cent in tariffs on Chinese imports, which could result in the decoupling of the world's two largest economies.And while he may claim to be 'a true friend' of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with a $35.3 billion trade surplus in India's favour, Trump is likely to impose a 10 per cent rise in tariffs on Indian exports to the US. India had a taste of this Trumpian resolve during the first term, when in 2019 he withdrew the preferential tariffs New Delhi enjoyed under America's Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) that covered $6.3 billion, or 12 per cent of the goods exported to the US. The tariffs on steel and aluminium exports also went up by 25 and 10 per cent, respectively.All India could do was retaliate, by imposing higher tariffs on 29 goods it imported from the US, including almonds, walnuts, chickpeas and apples. Many experts expect Trump to only be tougher in his second tenure. Mukesh Aghi, president of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF), warns, 'Not just India and China, Trump is going to close the doors of America from the import perspective by putting in massive tariffs. There will also be lot of transactional uncertainty where there could be frequent changes in policy that could disrupt India's exports.'Some do spy an opportunity for India in Trump targeting trade with China, saying it could make Indian goods more competitive. Tellis is quick to curb that enthusiasm, saying he expects only a modest rise in exports on this count. 'At the end of the day,' he says, 'India has neither the quality nor the competitive pricing to match China. Also, since all this activity is essentially driven by the private actors in the global marketplace, India may not be able to become an adequate substitute.'The exceptions are niche areas like defence products that concern national security, where US companies may be willing to pay a premium to import from India rather than China. Also, rather than the retaliatory trade measures India responded with in Trump's first term, experts advise that we make concessions in some of the tariffs to accommodate the US. As an official experienced in such negotiations says, 'We should not look to balance every trade deal, but look at the macro picture and see where we can do business. The Trump administration is pragmatic and will be happy to go in for a win-win deal.'Another likely area of friction is Trump's policy on migrants, especially illegal ones. While he will use the strong-arm measures he has promised to evict illegal migrants, even in his victory speech, he was forced to concede that he was not against legal migrants. It is not only South Americans who will feel the heat of Trump's crackdown on illegal migrants. There are a large number of illegal migrants—an estimated 725,000—from India as well, particularly from Punjab and Gujarat, who seek refuge in the US. Last year, the Biden administration deported over 1,100 of them back to India.Worse, Trump is also likely to further trim the number of H1B visas for non-immigrant workers, which is currently limited to 85,000 annually, a bulk of which are cornered by Indians. The second Trump administration is likely to withdraw the spouse's work permits and make rules for issuing such visas far more stringent. This could have a downside for Trump, though. Along with his restrictive trade policy measures, mass deportations are likely to cause price rise and inflation in the US, since it will become costlier to produce goods.India and TrumpFor New Delhi, Trump's return does not evoke as much anxiety as it does in other world capitals. That is because, in the past two decades, India and the US have 'overcome the hesitations of history', as Modi calls it, and forged a strategic partnership that has grown both in stature, depth and breadth. In his first term, Trump's trade antagonism towards China saw him view India as an Asian bulwark against Xi Jinping's aggressive ambitions. The Trump administration worked hard to put in place agreements that would make transfer of defence technology and equipment to India on par with its closest allies. It was Biden, though, who took India-US relations to an altogether higher level by not only clearing deals to sell state-of-the-art drones but also, in a first, permitting jet engine production in India.Biden and Modi also signed up for a major collaboration on critical and emerging technologies, including semi-conductor chips, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and wireless telecommunication. 'The US and India,' says Tellis, 'have dipped their toes in high tech before deciding to swim together. What's important is that the embrace is not just of government but also between the two societies at the entrepreneurial and technological layers. We need to structure such opportunities for Indian and US entrepreneurs to explore other possible partnerships for the long term.'Experts, however, point out that there is no room for complacency and, given Trump's mercurial personality, urge India to work hard to stay on his right side. 'It has to be a win-win situation,' says an expert in dealing with India-US relations. 'For that, both sides must realise the inevitability of India-US cooperation. For India, aspiring to be a developed nation by 2047, there is no better partner than the US. For Trump's mercantile approach, India, with its large middle-class market and talent pool, makes it important to continue engaging with it more closely for America's economic growth and for creating jobs.'Another expert says that the key is for Trump to see India as a solution provider for all the major problems that America faces. Few, for instance, know that Indian pharmaceutical companies supplied 40 per cent of all drug prescriptions filled in the US in 2022, resulting in an annual saving of $219 billion to America's health expenditure because of their competitive pricing.India must also try to be the first mover in the opportunities a Trump administration could throw up. The de-risking from China is critical for US companies, which offers Indian companies a chance to partner with them in a host of key areas. The Modi government needs to ensure that these companies have a level playing field, that there is transparency and consistency in policy, apart from making sure that there is absolute ease of doing business.Mukesh Aghi of USISPF also offers the radical suggestion of converting the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) comprising the US, Australia, Japan and India into a common market that could become a platform for their own economic growth. Combined, these countries have a GDP of $35 trillion. These four countries, he points out, are already collaborating on technology, security and other key areas and could together drive a whole new agenda on the economic front.One cannot be sure if Trump will buy into this form of mini-lateralism, especially as his 'Make in America' policy, which Biden also pursued, clashes with Modi's Make in India initiatives. Or if he will encourage friend-shoring some of the US production capacity to India. As Madan says, 'It depends on how Trump decides to deal with China. If he is hawkish towards Beijing, it incentivises his administration to give high priority to engage with India. Also, both India and the US will have to show willingness to manage their differences, including the pretty big stuff.'In addition to trade issues, Trump's position on climate change, including his decision to pull the plug on Biden's initiative to provide incentives to companies to lower their carbon emissions and fund greentech development, may be a source of worry. Trump's 'drill-baby-drill' slogan to encourage US domestic oil industry to expand production will mean a huge setback to the world climate change movement that India is committed to. On the plus side, it eases the pressure Europe has been putting on New Delhi to hasten its plans to phase out coal. Trump may also not press the brakes hard on green energy projects, so that his most vociferous supporter, Tesla chief Elon Musk, can fulfil his ambition to make his company the world's largest producer of electric cars.India may have one more thing going for it for Trump to maintain the relationship—the high-profile and prosperous 4.5 million Indian diaspora, which he has actively sought to woo. Kamala Harris may exit as vice president in January but Usha Vance, wife of VP-elect J.D. Vance, will ensure the India flavour remains. With Trump being an instinctive leader and responsive to personalised diplomacy, the old Modi playbook of hugs, rallies, catchy slogans like 'Namaste Trump' and blandishments could work well.The return of President Trump is without doubt one of the greatest political comebacks the US has seen. We also know that he will be predictably unpredictable. And that is precisely why his second term promises to be one of the biggest turning points in world history.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsTrending Reel