Still smarting from US President Donald Trump’s 50 percent tariffs, Indians have come to another bitter realization: The US leader appears to be singling New Delhi out, while giving Russia’s real backers in China a free pass.
The Indian establishment, which largely welcomed Trump’s ascent to power and genuinely believed that the two were on the cusp of a mutually beneficial deal, seems somewhat shell-shocked. Few could have predicted the humiliation of being just about the only country that emerged from negotiations with higher tariffs than those it was threatened with.
That has not been Indian diplomacy’s finest hour; Reuters quoted an official as saying that “we lacked the diplomatic support needed after the US struck better deals with Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and the EU.”
Perhaps that is why the response from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has been relatively muted. Hoping that negotiations could still be salvaged, New Delhi has called the tariffs “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” correctly pointing out that the US continues to buy billions of dollars of fertilizers and uranium from Russia each year.
Typically, the statement also attacked the EU, which wants freer trade with India, not tariff walls — but then attacking the EU is everyone’s preferred move in international relations, including Europeans.
India is hardly alone. For example, Japan has resumed purchases of crude oil from Russia, but nobody seems to be going after them. What the Indian statement did not mention, but could have, is that China has received no penalties for its hefty energy purchases from Russia.
That silence covers a great deal of indignation. China is a much more sensible target for Trump’s ire if controlling Russia is really what he wants. Beijing provides far more meaningful support — economic and political — to Russian President Vladimir Putin than New Delhi does.
However, it appears that China is too big for Trump to bully. Its negotiators would likely be granted more time than others to come to a deal with the US, and it can continue to support Moscow with an impunity denied to India. (Trump last week said he could punish Beijing with additional tariffs over Russian energy, although one of his top advisers played down the likelihood.)
A New Delhi unhappy about the differential treatment Beijing is receiving would shift the target of its resentments from China to the US. Policymakers who would welcome a US trade war against China feel differently about a US that shies away from that confrontation to pummel India instead. Beijing emerges with its status enhanced, the only country that can take on Trump.
The difference in approach stings partly because Russian energy is not quite as important to India as some might think. The ratings agency ICRA estimated that India saved only US$3.8 billion last fiscal year thanks to Russian oil — compare with the US$242 billion it spent on crude imports overall. Nor does all that US$3.8 billion filter down to ordinary citizens. A significant proportion of refined oil is re-exported, reducing consumers’ bills in the rest of the world.
Given the narrowing discount on Russian oil, most in New Delhi assumed a shift to other sources — including US supplies — would come sooner rather than later. They did not think there was any tearing rush; perhaps it would be baked into a broader deal between India and the US. That assumption was clearly unwise, and born of overconfidence.
Making the shift now — thanks to the US president — would have serious political costs. Modi’s opponents, recognizing a rare opportunity to outflank him on nationalism, have accused him of being weak on Trump. A tide of anti-Americanism runs deep and strong among the intellectual class, and the unfair singling out of India has brought it all to the surface.
When surrounded by intemperate voices declaring that national pride is as stake, it is hard for most leaders to take rational decisions. The government bears some responsibility for making relatively small gains from the Russia trade sound like a matter of vital national interest. It would now have to figure out a way to gracefully turn that message around.
Others unfriendly to the US are also moving in to take advantage of New Delhi’s discomfiture. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — which has been hit by US tariffs that are transparently political in nature — has called Modi to pitch a joint front against Trump. It has been reported that senior officials are to travel to Moscow shortly; and the prime minister himself might go to China for a meeting of the Beijing-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
A trip by Modi to China would have been unthinkable just a year or so ago; he has not visited once in seven years, but it is not surprising, either, given how China appears to be able to shake off attacks that India has to endure. The only country that Trump cannot bully might also be the only source of protection against him.
Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, he is author of Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Father’s Day, as celebrated around the world, has its roots in the early 20th century US. In 1910, the state of Washington marked the world’s first official Father’s Day. Later, in 1972, then-US president Richard Nixon signed a proclamation establishing the third Sunday of June as a national holiday honoring fathers. Many countries have since followed suit, adopting the same date. In Taiwan, the celebration takes a different form — both in timing and meaning. Taiwan’s Father’s Day falls on Aug. 8, a date chosen not for historical events, but for the beauty of language. In Mandarin, “eight eight” is pronounced
In a recent essay, “How Taiwan Lost Trump,” a former adviser to US President Donald Trump, Christian Whiton, accuses Taiwan of diplomatic incompetence — claiming Taipei failed to reach out to Trump, botched trade negotiations and mishandled its defense posture. Whiton’s narrative overlooks a fundamental truth: Taiwan was never in a position to “win” Trump’s favor in the first place. The playing field was asymmetrical from the outset, dominated by a transactional US president on one side and the looming threat of Chinese coercion on the other. From the outset of his second term, which began in January, Trump reaffirmed his
US President Donald Trump’s alleged request that Taiwanese President William Lai (賴清德) not stop in New York while traveling to three of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, after his administration also rescheduled a visit to Washington by the minister of national defense, sets an unwise precedent and risks locking the US into a trajectory of either direct conflict with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) or capitulation to it over Taiwan. Taiwanese authorities have said that no plans to request a stopover in the US had been submitted to Washington, but Trump shared a direct call with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平)
It is difficult to think of an issue that has monopolized political commentary as intensely as the recall movement and the autopsy of the July 26 failures. These commentaries have come from diverse sources within Taiwan and abroad, from local Taiwanese members of the public and academics, foreign academics resident in Taiwan, and overseas Taiwanese working in US universities. There is a lack of consensus that Taiwan’s democracy is either dying in ashes or has become a phoenix rising from the ashes, nurtured into existence by civic groups and rational voters. There are narratives of extreme polarization and an alarming
RSS