By Forcing Europe To Muster Up A Backbone, Trump Has Done India A good Turn

US president Donald Trump continues to hog global headlines. He has won a Supreme Court order to shelter his freeze on aid disbursals by USAID from a lower court ban. He, it would appear, has made headway in persuading Ukraine president Zelensky to share that country’s mineral wealth with the US, even if not quite on the rapacious terms the US president had initially proposed.

Trump has unveiled a new golden visa, under which anyone with the money, including Russian oligarchs, said Trump, could get a visa that is like a Green Card, offering residency rights and a pathway to citizenship, by paying $5 million. This replaces an ongoing visa scheme, under which anyone ready to invest $800,000 to $1.1 million could obtain a visa labelled EB-5.

Trump has even made it to the Oscars. A movie based on young Trump, called The Apprentice, has been nominated for an Academy Award for acting in two categories.

Trump continues to insult Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, calling him Governor Trudeau, riffing off on the Trumpian brainwave that Canada should become the 51st state of the US and avoid all tariffs. The administration leaked a story that Canada would be ejected from the Five Eyes Intelligence alliance among the anglophone nations, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, only to deny it later.

Trump’s Favour For India

However, Trump has done India a good turn, forcing Europe to muster up a backbone.

German elections to form the next government produced a result that pushed up Angela Merkel’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, to the top, in combination with its Bavarian regional twin, the Christian Social Union. It secured 28.5% of the vote. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came in second, with 20.8% of the vote. The party of the outgoing chancellor, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), came in third, with 16.4% of the vote. The SPD’s vote share loss of 10 percentage points was what the AfD gained.

Leader of the CDU-CSU, Friedrich Merz, is expected to lead the next government, becoming the chancellor, with the SPD as a coalition partner. One of his first statements after his ascent to the chancellorship made clear that he would strive to secure Europe’s independence from the US. He echoes the sentiments, on the one hand, of fellow European leader, president Emmanuel Macron of France, who has long advocated acquiring European strategic capability outside NATO, meaning, outside the control of the US, and, on the other, of the Trump regime’s reluctance to foot the bill for European Security. Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance told the Munich Security Conference earlier this month that Europe should look after its own security, even as the US turned its attention to other parts of the world.

On top of that, Trump has been negotiating peace in Ukraine directly with Russian leader Putin, over the heads of Europe and Kiev. Trump has made American disdain for Europe indisputably obvious, and Europe cannot hide this truth as they could when soft-spoken Barack Obama had announced America’s pivot to the Indo-Pacific and reduced troop strength in Europe.

Trump has forced the Europeans to begin fending for themselves. The result would be a spree of arms purchases by all the major European powers, and by Japan and South Korea in Asia, who would learn the lesson that they should look out for themselves, instead of relying on treaty protection by the US, if the US can abandon its long-time allies, Europe.

This guarantees the emergence of a multipolar world, which suits India just fine. India would risk its strategic autonomy should the world have just two superpowers, the US and China: India would need to take US help to hold off an aggressive China, and that help would come at a price that might not be acceptable to India. A multipolar world gives India more room for manoeuvre.

By setting in motion a peace process that is likely to see a swift end to the Ukraine war, Trump is doing India another favour. An end to the war would permit Ukraine and Russia to resume their wheat exports with gusto. India might be in need of wheat imports this year, thanks to the unseasonal heat that the India Meteorological Organisation is reportedly forecasting. Traditionally, Russia and Ukraine have been some of the biggest exporters of wheat in the world.

Paralysed Agri Policy

March this year is expected to be very hot in north India, where the bulk of winter wheat is grown. March is the month when wheat normally ripens on the stalk, with moisture and temperature suited for the grain’s healthy growth. Climate change has been upsetting the seasonality of heat and cold, of rain and shine. Crops are being hit. The wheat crop has been anaemic these last two years, and in 2022, India even had to ban the export of wheat. The ban is still in place. In 2023, India resorted to wheat imports.

Food security is one thing that no government can hope to violate and get away with. For fear of compromising food security, India has been producing grain far in excess of what it needs to feed its people. In the case of rice, India holds excess stocks, nine times the buffer stocking norm of 7.6 million tonnes valid for February.

Rice and wheat are potential substitutes, but cultural preferences need to be overcome for that substitution to take place. A shortage acute enough to make the cost of either grain exorbitant would overcome the natural preference of regional taste buds, but that would carry a heavy political cost for the ruling party.

Between the fear of consumers, who hate pricey food, and the fear of farmer backlash, should they be prised out of their comfort zones to cultivate new crops, such as, say oil seeds and pulses, which India imports, in place of grain, of which India has a partial excess, policy stands paralysed. That leaves Indian agriculture struggling on, laden with subsidy but failing to make either the farmer or the consumer truly happy.