When Donald Trump announced his tariff plan, he put a number on just about every country. But he failed to put a value on just about any.

One consequence? For the first time in seven years, India’s prime minister is in China. Narendra Modi reportedly is refusing to accept phone calls from Donald Trump. Instead, he’s lending India’s considerable weight to Xi Jinping’s claim to be leading the creation of a new world order.

Illustration by Joe BenkeCredit:

“It’s all courtesy of Donald Trump,” says a leading Indian strategic analyst, C. Raja Mohan. The US spent the past 20 years courting India in an attempt to bring it into the Western orbit, away from the embrace of China and Russia.

China helped decisively. By instigating a border conflict with India in 2020. India, said Modi at the time, was “hurt and angry”. Its relations with China ruptured. The West, it seemed, had won India over. Trump lost it in a matter of months. By piling a tariff of 50 per cent onto India, “Trump left no room for Modi”, says Mohan, visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.

The US had promised to negotiate over the tariffs. But when Delhi refused to support Trump’s fetish to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the Americans cancelled the negotiations.

“The US has always played hard-knuckle, but for the first time in my lifetime we see the US taking pleasure in humiliating its partners,” Mohan tells me. “While being so nice to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. This is a crazy time.”

Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping greet each other in........

© The Sydney Morning Herald