Image by Nitish Gouda.

Friends No More

In 2019, Donald Trump and Narendra Modi paraded their bromance with a 50,000-person “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston. They followed that up with a “Namaste Trump” 100,000-person event in India. As recently as February, Trump lavished praise on Modi, saying the two countries had “a mega partnership for prosperity.”

Trump was the darling of the Indian diaspora in the US. He seemed quite willing to ignore Modi’s record as an aggressive Hindu nationalist who has sparked violence against the Muslim minority. The two men share an admiration for strongman rule and an obliviousness to human rights.

That was then; this is now. Trump has replaced the enduring friendship with a 25-percent tariff on Indian goods, and an additional 25-percent penalty tariff to protest India’s purchases of Russian oil. The US trade deficit with India was also mentioned as grounds for divorce.

But the real reason might be, according to Bloomberg, that Trump is miffed that India did not give him credit, which he claimed, for helping India and Pakistan reach a cease-fire in their May war. “Although the US never made a direct request for Modi to acknowledge Trump’s role in the ceasefire,” Bloomberg reports, “India saw a shift in tone from the White House after that phone call, according to the officials in New Delhi.” The report is easy........

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