Today February 12th to the 13th, Modi will be the second foreign leader to visit Donald Trump in Washington.
Since Trump's threat to impose 100% tariff on BRICS countries "ditching the dollar", India reportedly rejected any planned BRICS currency, in which Yuan will have a prominent role. However, could they afford to take such firm stand with India's strengthened trade and military cooperation with Russia, including Russia-India trade route through Central Asia?
India have been playing both sides of the geopolitical divide. Delicately balancing the oil diplomacy to source oil from Russia and Iran and redistribute to Europe and South America. Despite being a founding member of BRICS and participated in the Shanghai Cooperation, India is also a member of QUAD, a military cooperation for the Indian Ocean security meant to contain China.
With US's intensified sanctions against China, Russia and Iran, including the latest threat on South Africa, it will be more challenging for India to continue to play the same game.
Modi could boost of strong rapport with Trump in the past, but second term Trump seemed less accomodative. The inhumane deportation of 104 Indian undocumented immigrants, which invited anger from within India, is indicative.
Migration is output of India's human development and contribute to the remittance economy. Thus goverment would rather remain silent and cooperate in the deportation of its citizen.
Question is will America-first Trump have a place for India to forge any strategic ties to counter China.
Star Online reported:India cheered Trump’s return, now it’s worried
By ANDY MUKHERJEE
INSIGHT
Friday, 07 Feb 2025
EVEN as recently as November, when the US election outcome was clear, the mood in India was optimistic. The Hindu right wing, which supplies Prime Minister Narendra Modi with some of his most ardent supporters, held religious ceremonies to celebrate Donald Trump’s win.
Many in the analyst community cheered from the sidelines, expecting India to be a net beneficiary of new tariffs of 60% on all Chinese exports to the United States, which is what the president had promised during his campaign.
India’s challenge around the time of the vote was largely domestic: Cost-of-living pressures, especially high food prices, were taking a toll on urban consumption.
Growth was slowing rapidly; yet stubborn inflation was delaying monetary stimulus. As I wrote back then, the bigger headache for Indian authorities was tomatoes, not Trump.
While the domestic slowdown is still the biggest headache for policymakers, the drum beats of Trump’s trade war are no longer so distant. From even before his return as president, there has been some unease around how the relationship between Trump and Modi will evolve.
Their personal bonhomie was at its peak five years ago, with Trump showing up for the “Howdy Modi” extravaganza in Houston, and Modi returning the favour with a “Namaste Trump” spectacle in his home state of Gujarat a few months later.
But this time around, there was a palpable lack of enthusiasm – from Trump’s side. And it was noticed in India.
Rahul Gandhi, the main opposition leader, said in parliament that S Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister, had been sent to the United States to secure an invitation for Modi to Trump’s swearing-in ceremony.
Jaishankar accused Gandhi of spreading a deliberate falsehood. “At no stage was an invitation (for) the prime minister discussed,” he said in a post on X, the social-media platform.
Aside from the political point-scoring, what is true, however, is that even before Trump’s Jan 20 inauguration, jitters about the US-India relationship had begun to replace complacency, with first signs of trouble showing up not in trade but immigration.
The “Make America Great Again” camp split down the middle on the issue of H-1B visas, which allow Indian-born software professionals to live and work in the United States pending permanent residency. Outsourcing firms from Bengaluru, India’s Silicon Valley, compete furiously for these visas for their employees to serve their biggest market.
The sense of foreboding worsened when, soon after moving into the White House, the new president passed a Birthright Citizenship Order, which has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.
It denies US citizenship for children born to parents who aren’t permanent residents: Techies on H-1B visas can take years – sometimes decades – to obtain their so-called green cards.
Many young Indian couples in the United States opted for pre-term deliveries to beat the Feb 20 deadline in Trump’s order.
This is just the white-collar angst. At the other end of the immigration spectrum are undocumented workers. Between 2019 and 2022, Indians were the third-largest group to enter the US illegally, often via the risky “donkey” route of border crossing.
The fact that Trump sent back an estimated 104 of them in a military plane before Modi could have a chance to meet him during a much-anticipated visit to Washington shows that the US president wants to negotiate from a position of strength.
India has already offered a concession by agreeing to work with the White House to take back its undocumented workers, despite the political embarrassment the government will face back home.
Every incoming flight of deportees would shine a spotlight on the Modi administration’s record of employment creation: Why are so many Indians desperate to leave the world’s fastest-growing major economy? Don’t they have jobs at home?
That’s just one of the aces the US president holds as he looks to play trade and immigration policy cards to bargain for greater access for the likes of Walmart Inc to the Indian market.
The Modi government is already striking a conciliatory tone: Its annual budget on Saturday cut import tariffs on many products.
Additionally, it could offer to limit imports of crude oil from Russia, which the United States has sanctioned for its invasion of Ukraine.
It might even set aside national-security concerns – and ignore vehement opposition from local telecommunication companies – to allow Elon Musk’s Starlink Inc and Amazon.com Inc to offer satellite broadband services in the most-populous nation.
New Delhi might want a few things in return, like a mothballing of the US Justice Department’s bribery charges against Indian infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani, a prominent Modi ally.
Separately, it would hope that Washington would not push it any further on allegations of organising a conspiracy to murder an American citizen on US soil.
India has said it’s recommended legal action against an individual it believes is involved in the plot.
Trouble is, nobody can predict if the concessions currently on the table will be enough, or whether the White House will ask for more.
After all, were Trump to pick his adversaries by how much they contributed to the US trade deficit, Asia’s old and new export powerhouses – China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea – would all be juicer targets than a far more inwardly focused economy like India.
It’s that navel-gazing approach to trade, and the favouring of domestic corporate interests over foreign players, that has put a target on India’s back. — Bloomberg
Since surpassing its former colonial master, Britain as the world's fifth largest economy in 2022 and expected to edge Germany soon, Indian economy is facing resistance as its stock market wiped out in the last six months the past steady gains, sharp decline of rupees against the dollar, and reality of slower than expected growth.
The visit today will have tariff high up on the agenda. India have not been specifically mentioned like Canada, Mexico and China, but economists expect India and Thailand looms high to face the risk of Trump's tariff threat.
Trump had previously called India as "very big abuser" for the far above average tariff imposed on the US. Can expect Modi to be giving tariff reduction concession. Modi's early visit is to kow tow and avoid a trade war similar to between US and China.
For other Asian economies, the visit provide the yardstick for them to ready for the eventual negotiations with Trump.
The lesson for Malaysia is that it is painful on the behind to be sitting on the fence and play neutral.
The worry is the inability of once US-friendly Anwar to offer Trump the diplomatic congratulatory phone call puts Malaysia in an uncomfortable and uncertain position.
Is the prickly problem due to Anwar and the liberal NGOs he used to be associated are allied to the Democrat or his vocal position on Palestine?
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