On July 31, President Donald Trump announced 25 per cent tariffs on Indian imports into the USA. Subsequently the tariffs were hiked to a cumulative rate of 50 per cent. On 20 September, President Trump announced a $100,000 fee for H1B visas, of which Indian professionals are the primary beneficiaries. India is but one extreme example of the foreign policy of President Trump in his second term. While his MAGA agenda is clear and evident and his insistence on protectionism is implied in it, he seems to be oblivious of international undercurrents and is exhibiting insensitivity towards the impact of American decisions on the fabric of world affairs.

For countries like India having close ties with the USA the current administration has become a challenge. What President Trump is doing, essentially, is to disturb friendly diplomatic relations with other countries that were cultivated over decades, on the pretext of tariff rates. The Indian exception is the levy of exorbitant visa fees, to stop Indian professionals from entering the US. However, no nation can survive in isolation in today’s hyper globalized world. Everyone is interconnected. To put economic and bilateral relations at stake for the sake of an individual issue defies the statesman’s logic of keeping national interests paramount while cultivating friendships in the ever-changing international politics.

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In fact, what President Trump is doing is the exact opposite to what American Presidents had been doing in the 20th century, that is engaging the world and resisting the isolationist foreign policy of the 19th century. Presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson had seen the merit of participating in world affairs. Wilson went ahead and helped in creating the League of Nations after World War I to mitigate animosities in Europe. It was in the same spirit that Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman architected the United........

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