When 2nd April Comes

Stressing his agenda to an unsuspecting world!

The celebrated poet TS Eliot called April the Cruelest Month. President Trump, in his second avatar as the crusader of the first world, has set the second of April 2025 as the D-day for implementing his much-touted reciprocal tariffs on ‘the bad boys of global trade’. Not just China but India, among many other nations, too have been suddenly delivered a knuckle in the belly! The world suddenly remembered the forewarning and the near prophetic branding of April by Elliot.   

There is much scrambling of tactical posturing and strategic rejig that nations across the globe are busy with in the aftermath of the Trumpian agenda of mass disruption of global trade and commerce.

Let us not live on an inflated self-image of India as a global trade and capital flows partner that the world is craving to do business with. The truth is we have a paltry share of global trade and we are far less consequential in the large canvas of world trade than China, Europe or even some Southeast Asian economies. Whatever economic clout we have in today’s connected and digitalized world is because of the technology skill sets of our young graduates and the massive ‘body shopping’ demands that exist in the more prosperous economies. India is essentially a services ‘beast’ a rather skewed economic player with our leveraging ability limited to the services sector.

The way Trump has consistently built up the tempo of his MAGA agenda, he just cannot (and will not, for sure) leave out India from the tariff bulldozer that he prides on. After all, in this country we are by now used to and have accepted as ‘normal’, the bulldozer raj in domestic politics. Don is just deploying an economic variant of Modi’s favourite bulldozer approach to smash all obstacles and opposing views to the ground. True, there is no double-engine approach unlike in the UP. In the US it is just one engine, the great Trump Engine that can pulverize any resistance. Can we complain as Indians?

Trump is after all driving an agenda, couched in Americanism but trying to preserve and promote a white middle-class majoritarian formulation, essentially a vote bank approach, similar to the left-of-centre and right-of-centre appeasement narratives that are the staple food of our politicians in India.

At least Trump is not setting his sight on nostalgia for a bygone era of medieval greatness. Can Indians and our traditionalist rightwing ruling disposition crib about Trump wanting to make America great again? He says, “I want to hit you straight back with what you do to me. You charge me a 100% tariff on my products, I will do the same thing on what you export to us.” Those of us who are not driven by extreme and illogical partisanship would find it hard to blame Trump for being harsh on us.

One good thing that we see is that governments around the world have gone back to the drawing board and are busy doing their math and scheming their game plans to beat Uncle Sam’s belligerence. At least governments have been made to realise that they should take governance a bit more seriously. That is what nations should be grateful to Trump for!

Trump being essentially a whimsical, overgrown child within, might have his last laugh and tell us on the third of April, “I was just taking the world for a ride. I have now decided to postpone my tariff playbook implementation. You can all go back and indulge in what you love most.  Which is, to deflect people from the real worries and issues and give them playthings to fantasize, mock and make-believe”.

Though Trump chose April 2nd as his tariff deadline instead of April 1st, being All Fools Day, it may be that he has a point to prove. After all,  April 2nd can be as comic as the first. Now, isn’t that a great disruption too? Of perceptions and stereotyping.