Two messages in tortuous in a Donald Trump tweet attacked India and Russia simultaneously. For India, the threat sought to dissuade Narendra Modi to buy Russian oil with an implicit incentive to support the United States for such help.
A posterior tweet was rejoiced by growing American solid ties with Pakistan, thus rubbing more salt in the lacerating wound of India. For Russia, the threat was more serious and more worrying despite the fact that the Indians are full of their own pain, which otherwise should be an occasion to collect another more reliable appointment for a life together.
For the self -proclaimed the fourth largest economy in the world, the numbers contradict the history of pain on Trump’s rates. The wounded position intends to deceive the public.
The figures of the United States commercial representative’s office indicate a more placid truth. The total assets of India-United States in 2024 was an estimated $ 129.2 billion. Of these, the exports of US goods to India were $ 41.8 billion, an increase of 3.4 percent ($ 1.4 billion) since 2023. Imports of US goods from India totaled $ 87.4 billion in 2024, an increase of 4.5 percent ($ 3.7 billion) of 2023.
The Commercial Deficit of US goods with India was $ 45.7 billion in 2024, an increase of 5.4pc ($ 2.4 billion) over 2023. The main Indian exports were pharmaceutical products, gems and jewelry, textiles and clothing and organic chemicals. The Brouhaha on Trump’s scarecrow rates is a deliberately exaggerated reaction. And here is why.
In November 2020, a few months after returning to power for a second term, the Modi government made a precipitous decision for India against joining the Integral Regional Economic Association backed by China.
Many of China’s regular rivals joined, including Japan and Vietnam, but not in India.
Modi’s poorly advised decision against the RCEP led to lost opportunities for economic growth, as well as strategic influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Specifically, analysts say, India lost greater access to the market, investment opportunities and a stronger role in regional supply chains. The reports of the Peterson Institute for the international economy estimated that India could have experienced income and GDP profits by joining RCEP, potentially around $ 60 billion annually. The reasons for the decision of Modi seem to have been less than sincere.
Indian officials were summoned saying that RCEP could expose Indian industries to greater cheaper import competence, which can affect national manufacturing and employment. If that were the case, which seems unlikely, what do we suppose Trump is trying to do: to promote Indian manufacturing and employment?
And if the fear of exposure to competition was in fact a factor, what do you think India is doing in Brics, whose presidency is next year, when it is host of a crucial summit? BRICS is an increasingly powerful economic group and a robust challenger of hegemony in the United States dollars. Being in Brics and not joining RCEP would not get the admission of Modi advisors to Mohalla Infantes.
The explanation of the decision is more likely to be in the malleable American lobby of India that has placed the fate of the nation since the fall of the USSR. A malleable object is stubborn, which can support hammer blows and just change its shape or shape, but never break. The American lobby of India is equally a supplicant of unwavering faith in its transatlantic deity, it comes to rain or thunder. Go to the deity as the source of its own prosperity and class survival.
The solid lobby loyalty to the United States makes it immune to insults and the body blows President Trump has begun to throw it. The deity by which they swear and crawl before cannot disappoint them, says the lobby. The supplicants witnessed with a silent self-recrimination, for example, chains and taps put other Indians for the vicious meaningless deity.
The Brouhaha on Trump’s scarecrow rates is a deliberately exaggerated reaction.
Several were placed in military planes with orders to land of indiscreet cameras in Delhi. As the horrible scenes were developed, the lobby remained flip. “It’s the temple rule, after all. What can we do?” He went to a volatile worshiper who has descendants in the United States singing hymns to the deity.
Recently, he began speaking with a human voice from the undulating smoke and the chaos of the Sndoor operation and Bunyan Marsoos. He said he had pressed on both sides and the war stopped. The American lobby was in an attack. The deity said he had won the Pacifier Trophy, which would be an aid but not a requirement for the Nobel.
Indian leaders said they had enforced the fire, not the deity. But they could not explain why they had accepted the fire if they won. Prime Minister Modi cannot accept Trump’s version of Alto El Fuego, at least not before the Bihar elections.
Then, India has received a poor hand for Trump. It deserves a fairer treatment. BRICS and RCEP have to do with that, but the American lobby stands along the way. There is also a commercial calculation. Many can erode their open or undercover assets if important economies migrate away from the dollar.
Trump’s message to Moscow was even more threatening. Like the American lobby that links Trump’s anger with Modi’s swollen ego as the culprit of avoiding Brics’s mention as the true criminal, the Tiff with Russia is developing as an invective between Trump and former president Dmitry Medvedev.
The West has been exploring a decapitating strike in Moscow for decades, which is what Trump reheated when sending Trident missiles with thermonuclear tip aboard two submarines near the Russian maritime border.
Unlike India, the Russian response was withering. He reminded Trump for the dangers of “dead hand”, a highly precise programmed system to unleash thousands of nuclear missiles in Russian arsenal against Western objectives in case there is a decapitating attack on Russian leadership by the United States. Like Russia, India should have little to fear Trump’s crazy pyrotechnics. But the American lobby is working overtime to stop the review of very late foreign policy.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
Posted in Dawn, August 5, 2025
