Trump’s ‘gorilla’ approach has actually made it harder for India to do a deal

4 comments

1. >I have been following this negotiation and right from the start, one of the consistent things has been the lack of consistency. In a traditional negotiation — for example, between India and the UK — you had an Indian team who knew roughly what its govt wanted and would accept, and you had a UK team that knew what London would accept. They would negotiate and then bring the final big questions to the leaders. In this case, the US negotiating teams do not know for a fact what Donald Trump will accept. At the end of a phone call, there is a 50% chance of an announcement where everyone’s happy, and a 50% chance of a tariff escalation.

   >When all of this kicked off, I had some optimism that India could do a reasonably good deal, or at least one that sort of turns the Trumpian ‘Eye of Sauron’ away from India and onto other targets because of the close personal relationship between Modi and Trump, and also because the Indian system itself is quite protectionist. I also naively thought that the US had a real strategic interest in making sure that they have a close working relationship with India. From the US perspective, India would be a natural ally in China’s neighbourhood that should be courted and should certainly not be pushed into deepening its engagement with the BRICS. What we saw this week is that none of that was enough.

   These two paragraphs tell you what you need to know about the way Trump and his ‘negotiating teams’ do diplomacy. India is unfortunate in not having locked in a deal earlier because it would have kept Trump’s attention away from them for at least a few months while he grappled with Russia, China and domestic issues. Now the ‘Eye of Sauron’ is fixed firmly on them.

   >To butcher a nature metaphor, it’s sort of him saying, “I am going to use US power to go and get things from others because we are the gorilla and they’re the monkeys”. The problem with that approach is that it puts other leaders in a position where they have to politically justify any concession they make because it is a national humiliation. Some countries will understand a degree of national humiliation. But when you come to someone like Modi, whose personal image is that of someone who is tough and who fights for India, you actually make it hard for him to do a particularly one-sided deal. It would be much, much easier for him to sell a deal with Trump if the latter did not have a tendency to then go on TV and be like ‘we own them’.

   See, if Trump had asked nicely, or asked firmly but behind closed doors, India could and would have stopped buying Russian oil. After all they stopped buying Iranian oil when Trump sanctioned them in his first term. As he did to Iran then, he could have squeezed Russia’s money *and* maintained a cordial relationship with India. Instead he had to throw a tantrum and humiliate them, and in doing so pushed them firmly into Russia’s orbit.

   This is India’s actual dilemma. It’s not just about tariffs or Russian oil anymore; it’s about sovereignty and respect. That’s something Modi can’t (publicly) compromise on, which his opposition and Indian voters won’t let him compromise on, but which Trump and his advisors don’t care about when it comes to other countries.

2. In all honesty, the worst thing you can do if you want India to do or not do something, is to dictate terms to it, sort of like ultimatum.

   If trump had only picked up the phone and worked it out with Modi, they may well have had a positive response. But to call India “dead economy”, cozying up to terrorists leaders and then demanding they do something pretty much guarantees it will not happen.

3. The open support of Pakistan is the bigger problem. It is not received well in India that Pakistan made nuclear threats to India from US soil. And, I haven’t seen any statements from US officials denouncing it. So, Indians will have to assume those are US approved statements.

4. Frankly, a trade deal with India isn’t that important to the US. I don’t know how important it is to India, but the US only exported something like $40 billion to India last year. Maintaining decent relations with India is substantially more important than trade with India, but neither one is critical.

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