It is highly debatable whether a strategy of US primacy — meaning, a global power arrangement where the United States is not just one of a number of similarly powerful nations, but by far the most powerful and influential — is even in the country’s best interests. Pursuit of this goal has been devastating for American communities over the past few decades, from free trade deals that hollowed out local industry to endless wars that sent young Americans home in planes full of body bags.
But winning a permanent US-dominated future is what Donald Trump thinks is in the best interests of the United States. And so far, he is doing everything possible to undermine his own goal.
Just look at the state of US relations with India, a key US partner and a lynchpin of Washington’s wider strategy to counter a rising China. India is emerging as a major global player and economic powerhouse that, crucially, has spent the past few years at a low point in its relations with China.
When Trump’s trade war with China necessitated finding a new production base for iPhones to insulate US consumers from what would have been a price explosion, India gamely stepped up, allowing Apple to move the majority of iPhone assembly to its shores. As Trump side-eyes BRICS, the economic partnership not-so-subtly angling to sidestep US dominance, India is the closest thing to Washington’s man on the inside, steadfastly opposing the grouping’s budding efforts to undermine the US dollar supremacy core to global US power. This is the fruit of decades of bipartisan work across multiple administrations to draw India closer to Washington and away from Beijing’s sphere of influence.
In the space of a little more than a week, Trump has jeopardized all that. Trump is now levying a significantly higher effective tariff rate on India (50 percent), his ostensible partner, than China (30 percent), the country he considers his biggest adversary. This is driven in large part…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
