Among major countries in the world, India was one of the least concerned as to whether the US electorate would choose Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. High-level officials in Narendra Modi’s government had been saying for months before the November polls that they did not believe bilateral relations would be affected, irrespective of who won the US presidential election. The fact that Harris was half Indian or that Trump’s inner circle contained a number of Indian-Americans, including Kash Patel (his choice as FBI chief), and the Second Lady tickled media interest, was seen as irrelevant to policymakers in New Delhi.
New Delhi’s assessment was that the strategic and economic foundations of the bilateral relationship had been remarkably steady, going back to the George W. Bush administration. The upward trajectory of the relationship would continue no matter who made it to the White House. Policymakers were further reassured after high-level Indian officials met foreign policy advisors from both camps in the September before the elections.
Going by the 11-year experience of Prime Minister Modi, there were policy tweaks depending on whether Democrats or Republicans were in power. A Democratic administration was more likely to wag a finger about “democratic backsliding” and minority rights, while a Republican one was largely uncooperative on climate. None of these issues impinged on the relationship’s core elements, including common geopolitical concerns about China and working to plug India into US tech supply chains and merge their innovation ecosystems. Indian officials have always given Trump high marks for being the first US president to “call out” China, though they would agree Joe Biden did not hold his punches when it came to Beijing.
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The Trump campaign was marked by public criticism of India’s tariff barriers against manufactured goods. New Delhi is braced for a return to the punitive tariffs that were imposed worldwide during the first Trump term. The then-US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had indicated to his Indian counterparts in 2020 that the tariffs were a precursor to negotiations for a bilateral trade agreement in which the key issues would be data and digital policy. The two governments had worked out a five-point agenda and set a date in April for the first meeting. Instead, the COVID-19 pandemic intervened and subsequently Trump lost the elections. While the final contours of Trump’s economic team remain unclear, India believes things are likely to pick up where Lighthizer had left off. India’s main economic relationship with the US is based on service exports, but fortunately Trump has had little to say about that part of trade and tends to focus almost exclusively on manufacturing jobs.
The Modi government expects Trump to seek a similar “big deal” though the exact contours of such an agreement are unclear. Recently Trump announced the first list of countries he plans to impose tariffs on, but did not mention India. However, given that the US is India’s primary economic partner and that critical technology cooperation has become much deeper in the intervening five years, New Delhi would welcome talks on technology and trade. Indian officials say this would fill a major hole in the country’s overall trade and investment policy.
Technology collaboration was the leitmotif of bilateral relations during the Biden administration. Washington worked overtime to give India access to sensitive military technology, plug India into high-tech supply chains, and encourage allies such as Japan and Taiwan to move investments to India. The iCET (initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies) was one of the Biden-Modi high points and saw the US give India access to sensitive defense technologies, like jet engine know-how, normally reserved for treaty allies.
Modi’s ministers have publicly said they expect the incoming administration to be less generous and more transactional on these issues. Nonetheless, there is an assumption that the broader trend of strategic technology cooperation will continue, whether bilaterally, through the Quad (comprising Australia and Japan, beside India and the US), or through new technology trilaterals such as the one created with South Korea. One test will be whether Trump upholds Biden’s agreements to create joint India-US pharmaceutical, green energy and semiconductor supply chains, especially as much of the actual manufacturing generated would be in India.
The day after the US elections, Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar said India expected this would accelerate the movement of supply chains away from China. “It is very likely that in view of the election results (…) that this would accelerate. I’ll be very candid with you, that some of this will be somewhat disruptive, but we in India perceive it as an opportunity because we have missed the manufacturing bus in the 1990s, early 2000s.”
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Trump had been particularly strident about immigration. New Delhi assumes many of these policies would be aimed at illegal migration, which poses no concerns for India. With Chinese immigration numbers receding, India expects to remain the second-largest source of legal migrants in the US, whether via the student or family reunion paths. Though it is still the largest applicant for H-1B working visas, India’s IT services industry has reduced its dependence on such temporary visas for highly skilled workers. H-1B issuances were reduced in the last year of the first Trump term and have remained at lower levels since then. While a further reduction in visas has not been ruled out, cuts would have only minimal impact on service exports.
Trump’s nomination of Mike Walz for National Security Adviser and Marco Rubio for Secretary of State is reassuring to New Delhi. Both have been strong supporters of closer India-US security relations, calling for India to be treated on par with formal military allies such as Israel and the UK. Within Trump’s circles, it is seen as a positive that India deliberately never asks for direct US military assistance, accepts no US defense aid, and pays fully for its weapons purchases. India is often favorably compared to European or Middle Eastern countries that count on US largesse and troops for their security. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s choice as Director of National Intelligence, is a practicing Hindu, very familiar with India and has relations with the right-wing groups that form the base of Modi’s electoral support.
Still, Indian officials have their concerns about the Trump administration, and these are largely at the geopolitical level. First, India is worried that the President-elect’s determination to go after perceived enemies in the US will cause domestic disruptions sufficiently damaging to the US’s image that boost the image and influence of China, India’s primary strategic adversary. This is partly balanced by Trump’s desire to improve relations with Russia, which would align Washington more closely with New Delhi’s policy of avoiding the isolation of Moscow.
Second, India’s economic agencies have been modeling how to handle a potential tariff and currency war between the US and China. New Delhi assumes the secondary effects of this would include waves of even cheaper Chinese exports and a sharp increase in the exchange rate volatility of the rupee. Trump’s economic appointments have reassuringly been drawn from the policy mainstream so the trade-cum-currency war fears are receding. Third, India presumes it will receive less assistance from the US, whether financial or diplomatic, in its attempts to counter Chinese influence in the larger Global South.
During his first administration, Modi’s team worked to feed Trump’s sense of ego by organizing large rallies in the US and India for him. The President-elect’s comments about Modi have consistently remained positive. New Delhi accepts that it will still have to build bridges with new faces on the Trump team and in the inner circle. In addition, India has, perhaps inadvertently, developed one insurance policy with respect to the incoming president. It has become home to the second-largest number of Trump-branded buildings and resorts in the world, trailing only the US, with more under construction.