India must stop tiptoeing around Trump’s tariff threats

We always knew Donald Trump was eccentric — a president who upended geopolitics through a whimsical tariff policy that has now become a tool for coercion and blackmail. He has in the course of the last six months, managed to alienate key US allies while disrupting the world economy and the global trading order. And now, he has dealt a severe blow to the US relationship with India, a relationship that has been solid, with bipartisan support despite some differences over the years.

By announcing a 25 percent tariff on India along with unspecified “penalties” for India’s purchase of weapons and oil from Russia, and describing India’s economy as “dead”, Trump has taken his bullying to a new level - threatening India for pursuing an independent foreign policy. Some spin doctors in India insist this dramatic announcement is yet another negotiating tool that Trump is employing to get the kind of trade deal that he wants. But by targeting India’s relationship with Russia, he has upped the ante and seems to be giving India a warning to make a geopolitical choice. Soon afterwards, the US State Department announced sanctions against 6 Indian companies for trading with Iran’s petroleum sector while Trump came back on social media to say the US had struck a deal with Pakistan to help develop it’s oil reserves. To add salt to India’s wounds, he said: “Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling oil to India someday”!