This revolution has dismantled parts of the American State. It has dramatically withdrawn from international regimes and global development assistance commitments. It has placed the onus of European security on Europe while nudging its politics towards the far-Right. It has begun a process of a rapprochement with Russia even if it has meant taking a U-turn on American support to Ukraine. It has made its ambitions of complete dominance over the western hemisphere clear, through coercion and extraction. And it has upended the international trading regime by using tariffs as an instrument to bring manufacturing back to the US, punish friends and foes alike, and to achieve non-economic ends such as controlling immigration and the flow of fentanyl (the stated reason for the tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China). It was within this framework that Trump once again threatened to impose a regime of reciprocity on all other markets, including India, that he viewed as closed to American produce relative to the openness the US markets offer them.

In his speech, Trump doubled down on his revolution’s political premise and its political road map. Democrats offered feeble opposition in the chamber. And concerns over the implications of all these moves on the US’s credibility, its security, its economic prosperity got drowned by the simple political fact that Republicans control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. India must recognise that this is not the US it has dealt with in the last 25 years, a US that saw the benefits of “strategic altruism” and helping build Indian capabilities. This is a US that views India as a partner, but one that has taken advantage of the US. As flawed as this assumption may be, strategic imperatives require India to continue exercising maximum flexibility that it displayed during PM Modi’s visit to the US. It should work hard at closing a trade deal by the fall. But, at the same time, it must draw red lines when Trump’s demands hurt national interest, deepen its bilateral relations with the non-American Western world as well as the non-China Asian world, besides continuing to expand its footprint in the Global South. India must realise that its task of achieving sustained growth and security will now have to be done in an external climate that is challenging at best, and unstable at worst.