A US military plane carrying Indian illegal immigrants landed in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on Wednesday, handcuffed and legs chained throughout the journey. Unlike Colombia, which last month initially refused to accept deportees dispatched in military planes like criminals, India chose discretion as the better part of valour.
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It was not a particularly proud moment for a major US ally and rising power whose leader is supposedly a close friend of the new US president, but India is doing all it can to withstand the aftershock of Donald Trump’s second coming.
Last week, the tremors were felt in India’s annual budget presentation in parliament, one of the country’s most awaited government events. As Trump unleashed new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, the Narendra Modi government cut customs duties on high-end motorcycles, cars and smartphone parts.
The tax reduction will help American companies like Harley-Davidson, Tesla and Apple, earning the government some urgently needed brownie points with Washington. Indian tariffs on Harley-Davidson, in particular, had been an old Trump peeve. The last time he was president, he forced Modi to slash tariffs on Harleys from 75 per cent to 50 per cent. This time Delhi isn’t taking any chances.
The fear is palpable. Not just pre-emptive tariff cuts, Modi’s government has been bending over backwards to get on the right side of the new US administration in every other way – from assuring it of India’s commitment to the primacy of the US dollar to accepting 18,000 illegal Indian immigrants Trump plans to send back.
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America’s US$35 billion trade deficit with India makes it an obvious target for Trump. He revoked India’s preferential trade treatment in 2019 and no one knows what plans he has for India this time. Ominously enough, he keeps calling India a major tariff abuser, and in a recent phone call with Modi, stressed that India needs to buy more security equipment from the US and ensure a “fair bilateral trading relationship” – diplomatese for easier market access. But Trump has also granted the Indian prime minister an audience next week, making Modi one of the first foreign leaders to meet the US president since his return to power, and raising India’s hopes for favourable treatment.