Crude Hypocrisy

If there is one thing more exhausting than Donald Trump’s tantrums, it is America’s staggering capacity for hypocrisy. In slapping a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports ostensibly for continuing to buy discounted Russian oil amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Trump is not merely bullying a democratic ally but betraying the very principles America claims to stand for. This is not a defence of free markets or global order. It is economic hooliganism dressed in the rags of nationalist theatre.

The claim that India deserves punishment for doing while dozens of countries including EU countries, the US and China continue to trade with Russia is laughable. The United States remains a steady buyer of Russian fertilisers, uranium and palladium, to the tune of over $24 billion since 2022.

India, meanwhile, has shown spine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s defiant stand that India will never compromise on the interests of its farmers and fishermen is a reminder that India’s agricultural backbone, which feeds 1.4 billion people and employs half the workforce, will not be sacrificed at the altar of American agro-industrial bullying. US agriculture enjoys massive state support and scale-driven cost advantages that make competition lopsided. India’s refusal to open its farm markets to such imports is not protectionism but food sovereignty.

Modi’s response has been statesmanlike. He has neither descended to Trump’s bluster nor allowed strategic ties with Washington to blind him to national interest.

Contrast that with Rahul Gandhi, who chose this moment to echo Trump’s bizarre remark that the Indian economy is “dead.” Gandhi, like Trump, has a flair for soundbites divorced from data. That he chose to parrot a foreign leader attacking India is not just poor politics but sabotage masquerading as dissent.

Modi’s planned visit to China for the SCO Summit offers a chance to deepen BRICS unity against Trump’s economic coercion. Brazil’s President Lula has already hinted at a coordinated response. If anything, Trump’s belligerence may succeed only in accelerating the de-dollarisation of global trade and the rise of alternate economic platforms that include China, India and Brazil. India must pursue a multipolar order in which the rules are not rewritten every four years to suit the whims of American presidents.

The more Washington bullies, the more New Delhi must double down on self-reliance and diversify its global alignments. As for Trump, his scattershot trade wars have historically backfired. In the past, he crippled American farmers with tariffs on China, turned allies into adversaries, and nearly gutted the WTO. His renewed campaign of tariff madness is less about policy and more about peacocking before his domestic base. It should be ignored with the contempt it deserves.

India is no longer the easy target it once was. It does not need to appease loudmouth populists to be taken seriously. The country’s economic rise is real. Its confidence is growing. And its farmers and workers deserve a world where trade is fair and not weaponised. Let America huff and puff. India will not bend.