Hillary, Trump & India

Who’ll be better for India? President Hillary Clinton or President Donald Trump? The two are locked in a fierce contest that will culminate on November 8. The new United States president will be sworn in on 20 January 2017.

There are three broad areas that define the India-US relationship: trade, terrorism and technology.

On trade, Trump is perceived as anti-globalisation. He has pledged to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that is currently under negotiation. He wants the United States to set up reciprocal tariff barriers against Chinese imports. Most controversially, he wants to cut down on outsourcing so that Americans get back the jobs they’ve lost over the decades to Asian information technology services companies.

At first blush that looks grim for India. TCS, Infosys and Wipro might be in Trump’s firing line. H-IB visas could be the first casualty. But look closer. Trump has repeated several times during his presidential campaign that he wants to increase trade with India. His targets are China, Japan and Mexico who have large trade surpluses with America.

A Trump presidency would actually be good for India-US trade which is currently under $70 billion – lower even than India’s trade with China. Trump has built luxury properties in India and knows his way around the Indian system. He gets it.

Does Hillary? A Hillary Clinton presidency would be good for India-US trade as well. But Hillary has veered sharply to the left-of-centre during the presidential campaign to thwart the challenge of socialist Bernie Sanders and appease his voter base. The Vermont senator’s young supporters form the Democratic party’s hard left. They won’t vote for Hillary in November if she does not include tough trade deals with countries like India in her manifesto.

Many disillusioned Sanders supporters have said they will cross party lines and vote for Trump who shares their views on issues like spurning the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP). Hillary too is against the TTP though her mentor President Barack Obama strongly supports it. Sanders’ acolytes are also wary of the Clinton Foundation which has received millions of dollars from countries like Saudi Arabia and Hillary’s own cosy ties with Wall Street.

The Terror Card
On terrorism, Trump will align himself with India’s interests. Pakistan will not get the wink-and-nudge treatment it has received from President Barack Obama. While drone attacks in AfPak have recently created a rift between Washington and Islamabad, Obama has turned a blind eye to the Pakistan state’s lethal support to Punjab-based terrorist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) as well as to the Pakistan army’s massacres in Balochistan.

A Hillary Clinton presidency will continue to lean towards Pakistan on security issues, especially in Afghanistan. Depsite her admonitory “rattlesnakes in the backyard” comment directed at Pakistan, Hillary has a soft corner for Islamabad. Radical Islam are two words that stick in her throat. She almost never utters them. Her closest aide Huma Abedin, whose father Syed Zainul is of Indian origin and mother Saleha Mahmood of Pakistani origin, spent 16 years in Saudi Arabia (from the age of 2 to 18 when she enrolled in college in the US). Now 40, she is a powerful influence on Hillary who often refers to Huma as her “second daughter”.

In contrast, Trump has controversially declared that as president he would “secure” Pakistan’s nuclear weapons” – whatever that means. He has pledged much tougher action against the Islamic State (ISIS). Hillary, for her part, will continue Obama’s cautious policy in dealing with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. She will treat evicting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad as a bigger priority that defeating ISIS – a prescription fraught with danger and a replay of George W. Bush’s disastrous regime change strategy by killing Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Tech Edge
The third key area in the India-US relationship is t echnology. Hillary and Trump will both encourage greater technological cooperation between the two countries. But there is a caveat. Trump will be more amenable to transferring advanced military technology to India. The Republicans, since the George W. Bush presidency, have sought closer technological cooperation, including on nuclear technology, with India. It was Bush who pushed the India-US nuclear civil agreement through US Congress. The Democrats under Obama have been dragging their feet over operationalising the agreement, especially over the liability clause. Hillary will hew to the traditionally cautious Democratic line on technology transfer, especially military. Trump will go further than even Bush did.

Both Hillary and Trump recognise that the India-US relationship is set to be the defining strategic partnership of the 21st century. Trump has said so in so many words. Hillary, more circumspect, has implied it as well.

Whoever wins the US presidency in November, the elephant in the room will remain China. The US wants India to be a regional counter to China. In return, India wants the US to be a buffer against terrorist threats in South Asia and to help slingshot it into the orbit of a global power. Indian and American interests therefore converge on all three broad areas of trade, terrorism and technology irrespective of who occupies the White House next.

Trump’s bombast puts many off. He has deliberately set himself up as a redneck politician to appeal to America’s blue-collar whites left out of the American dream as middle-class wages stagnate. Playing the tough cowboy gets him the Rust Belt vote.

Hillary is part of the traditional Washington elite: smooth as silk. Yet over 60 per cent of Americans polled recently found her untrustworthy and dishonest. The classified email scandal and her dismal record in the Middle-East as secretary of state during 2009-13 weigh heavily against her.

Trump and Hillary have a combined age of 138 years (Trump is 70, Hillary 68), making them the oldest presidential candidates in recent US history. The latest opinion polls in this contest between two deeply polarizing candidates give Hillary a comfortable lead as the November 2016 presidential election draws near. But if a week is a long time in politics, as former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, three months is an eternity.