US President Donald Trump has brought the curtains down on the age of globalisation, forcing India to unlearn much of its approach to international trade developed since the 1990s.
By Aniket Chakraborty
Apr 4, 2025
At a White House ceremony, Trump announced sweeping tariffs against America's trade partners while inviting a retired auto worker from Detroit to highlight the loss of manufacturing jobs.
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Trump has confidently predicted that the short-term pain from his tariff war is necessary to restore American manufacturing jobs and end what he calls "loot and pillage" of America.
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Opposition to free trade has been one of Trump's core political convictions for four decades, featuring prominently in all three of his presidential campaigns.
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Trump has achieved a political transformation by turning the traditionally free-trade Republican Party into a guardian of the American working class.
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Despite their initial anger, many trade partners with surpluses against the US are negotiating with Trump, with Canada and Mexico already engaged in complex bargaining.
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China, which enjoys a trade surplus of nearly $300 billion with the US, faces tariffs now amounting to more than 60% as promised during Trump's election campaign.
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South East Asian countries that benefited from rerouting Chinese goods into the US now face both growing Chinese dumping and rising US tariff walls.
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India needs to look beyond multilateral approaches, negotiate bilateral deals with major economies where it enjoys surpluses, and press for greater market access in China.
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As the world enters a post-globalisation era, India needs a new wave of major internal reforms to navigate the uncharted and tricky road ahead.