Trump's tariffs backfire, India closer to China: the scenarios

"With Donald Trump, we'll waste two years: the time it takes him to travel around the world, which he doesn't know." Perhaps Jean-Claude Juncker, who, as President of the European Commission, publicly spoke in these terms in 2016 about the newly elected President of the United States, wasn't so wrong. His attitude was very different from that of Ursula von der Leyen, who, urged by member states, agreed to go and strike an unequal tariff deal at the American tycoon's golf resort in Turnberry, southwest Scotland.

The US's use of tariffs as leverage to pressure its partners, while it has worked perfectly so far with the European Union, could backfire in relations with a giant like India , the world's most populous country and a key partner for Washington in its competition with China. Trump has raised tariffs on imports from India to a prohibitive 50% , accusing New Delhi of continuing to buy oil from Russia.

Moscow , also thanks to the sale of crude oil, on which the West has attempted to impose a price cap without much success, can continue to finance the war of aggression against Ukraine , which the American president had claimed he would stop within 24 hours. In view of Trump's executive order, Delhi responded by announcing that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit China for the first time in over seven years .

The trip, which according to the Indian press represents a new chapter in the diplomatic rapprochement between New Delhi and Beijing, will take place in conjunction with the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, scheduled for August 31 in the city of Tianjin.

India is hedging

In short, India is hedging, drawing closer to Beijing, something the EU has been unable, or unwilling, to do. It's only natural that the subcontinent should engage with its powerful neighbor, given that the two countries share a 3,380-kilometer border—almost triple the length of Italy—mostly along the Himalayas. This complicated border has seen constant skirmishes, culminating in the bloody clashes in Ladakh in 2020-21, which resulted in dozens of deaths and forced the Indian Army to maintain thousands of soldiers at extreme altitudes, even in winter. Tensions between Delhi and Beijing eased only last year, when Modi met with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of a BRICS summit.

But the fact that Modi's mission to Tianjin leaked on Wednesday is a clear message to Washington: India has many friends and doesn't necessarily need the Americans . The attitude of the prime minister of a nation extremely sensitive to what are perceived as colonialist attitudes from the West is due not only to the Hindu nationalism of the Bharatiya Janata Party leader, but also to domestic political reasons: intolerance for what are perceived as Western abuses is a transversal theme in Indian politics.

Modi's main opponent, Rahul Gandhi, wrote on social media that " Trump's 50% tariffs are economic blackmail , an attempt to bully India over an unfair trade deal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he emphasized, "would be better off not letting his weakness prevail over Indian interests." Modi, already weakened by the results of the last elections (the BJP lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives, Lok Sabha), cannot afford to appear weak in the face of Trump . This, however, doesn't bother Europeans too much, as they are far less sensitive to the 'bullying' of the former British colony turned superpower, now led by a president of Bavarian and Scottish origins.

Modi is personally responsible and does not have a Commission president to pass the buck, as some European politicians, not Italian ones, have done, first by weakening the EU's position by demanding an immediate agreement with the US, then by supporting the choice to reach an agreement on tariffs to avoid a trade war, and subsequently by accusing the Commission of not having been strong enough.

Therefore, the tariffs Trump has decided to impose on India risk alienating Delhi from the US . This risk was recognized by a Republican politician who knows India well, being the daughter of the Sikh diaspora, Nikki Haley. As reported by Firstpost.com, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa (the maiden name of Trump's former GOP primary challenger) said that "India should not buy oil from Russia. But China, its adversary and the main buyer of Russian and Iranian oil, has obtained a 90-day tariff suspension. Don't give China a free pass and don't ruin relations with a strong ally like India."

Trump ignored his former UN ambassador and imposed astronomical tariffs on New Delhi, just days after calling India a "dead economy," on a par, he said, with Russia's. India's response to the US tariffs was decisive: "Targeting India is unjustified and unreasonable," said Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal, after Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs "significantly." "Like any major economy," he warned, "India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security."

Modi in China for the first time in 7 years

We'll see what the next moves will be for the world's largest democracy, which is also a pillar of the BRICS. Meanwhile, Modi will travel to China at the end of the month, for the first time in seven years. This is a signal that, even if the White House fails to heed, has certainly been sent loud and clear to the State Department. In international politics, there are neither eternal friends nor eternal enemies: only permanent national interests, as SD Pradhan, former chairman of India's Joint Intelligence Committee, wrote in the Times of India, quoting Lord Palmerston.

As Harsh V. Pant, vice president of the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, and Kalpit A. Mankikar, fellow for China studies at the same foundation, explained in Foreign Policy, India's rapprochement with China is a "pragmatic move" aimed at promoting the subcontinent's "economic interests" while the US spreads a climate of "uncertainty." The rapprochement with Beijing, however, is not a simple response to Trump's tariffs, but is a maneuver with solid geopolitical rationale . In particular, Foreign Policy explains, India's belief that Washington has shifted its stance toward Pakistan, its archenemy, and China is playing a role. Indian analysts believe that the Trump administration "could simultaneously move closer to Beijing and Islamabad, to detach Pakistan from China." New Delhi, for its part, hopes, with its reorientation toward China, "to be able to exploit the former of these trends while preventing the negative consequences of the latter."

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