Donald Trump holds the world to ransom with his tariff threats that he is using to browbeat nations to further his political and economic agenda. However, in the long run it would be a self goal as his core votaries may cheer now but they would be the worst sufferers
Evidently, Donald Trump, as President of the USA, is performing a rather comical dance of tariff for the benefit of his American audience. In the very initial days of his second presidency, he did display flashes of social memory from the days of his German origin. Some history is instructive here.
Adolf Hitler, the Nazi dictator of Germany had taken over Czechoslovakia by calling its prime minister Emile Hacha to his chancellery in Berlin, and by threatening him and his country’s security, drove him to collapse. The old man, to save his country from destruction, surrendered to Germany. But no sooner than the stricken prime minister returned to Prague, he jumped out of the fourth floor to end his life. The shame of surrendering to the Nazis had been too much to bear.
Austria too was taken over without pulling a trigger. Its chancellor was most unhappy, but the majority of the people were rather pleased at this union called Anschluss. One also cannot forget the forcible incorporation of Sudetenland, the western part of Czechoslovakia. This happened with the blessings of the British and French governments, in a sellout that was advertised as “preserving peace in our time”.
Immediately upon assuming office for the second time in January 2025, President Trump asked Denmark, a Western country and NATO ally, to simply hand over Greenland, which is Denmark’s territory, without a murmur. What was even more audacious was to ask the Canadian government to make the country join the US as its 51th state (the Pacific Ocean island territory of Hawaii having been the 50th to do).
The President’s new style of different tariffs for different countries seems to depend upon the mood of the White House. Whatever the merits of this new style, it has certainly helped him keep the World Trade Organization (WTO) out of the American window.
The “new style” has also gold plated itself with an aircraft, which has come as a dowry from Qatar to Washington DC.
While the going was good during the initial years of World War II, virtually everyone in Deutschland, including many Feld Marshals, were dazzled by the magic wand of the Fuhrer, whose moves resulted in victory after victory on the battlefield.
How an educated and advanced German population fell to the magic of a leader who rose from being a mere private to only a corporal during the four years of the First World War, was a mystery.
One hopes that similarly, a lesson from World War Two is not being forgotten again, by the educated and affluent American nation.
Though success is an intoxicating drug, the intoxication disappears with failure. It is difficult to predict what will eventually happen in the “new style” being played out in the USA, although the American culture is more akin to the Anglo-Saxon temperament. Therefore, one can only wait, watch and see.
As someone who was brought up by an American-educated father (he studied in Boston in the late 1920s), I would be much less hasty in judging the drama currently being played out in America, for three very conscious reasons. One, as a banker of the invaluable dollar, the USA must consider sobriety as the soul of responsibility. The current style of its current President and the acolytes around him appears not only unconventional, but also unsustainable for long.
Two, in order to command faith, the world’s most powerful country must be consistent, for decades if not centuries. Three, as the only power to have used the atom bomb, the USA must now ensure that it does not frighten the dominantly non-nuclear world.
During the recently concluded conflict between Israel and Iran in West Asia, American bombers bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. Many Iranians were for their part, really apprehensive: what would the Pentagon do in case an Iranian weapon fired in retaliation hurt the USA somewhere?
All in all, binding faith in a country’s ethnics and good-will should behove a leader of a nation, and especially a nation like the USA. What Pakistan or North Korea can get away is something the USA can ill-afford.
In this context, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s conduct during the years of his presidency, particularly during the Second World War, is shining enough for his successors to follow.
The imposition of punishment and penalties may satisfy one’s immediate constituency, but what would be the effect on the world audience is a question. By US volumes of trade, imports and exports from India would be comparably smaller; so, would be the gain and losses.
Why risk and throw away all the praises showered on Prime Minister Narendra Modi all these years by trying to earn a comparatively small sum of dollars? Moreover, Indians are one-fifth of the world’s people.
The Indian economy today is not what it was during the times of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. We are now the world’s fourth largest economy and are contributing close to 18 per cent to global economic growth annually, while the USA’s contribution at 11 per cent, is actually lower than India’s! Surely, this reality should be sobering enough for this tariff-happy. President to pause and think.
The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha