00:00Talking about statistics and the business figures, if I may quote here, I mean, in this
00:05Joe Biden administration, India has signed better and bigger deals as far as defense
00:11technology and AI is concerned, as compared to what we had seen in the era of Donald Trump.
00:17Do you believe that for the United States vis-a-vis India, be it Republican or be it
00:23Democrats, it is as much as India needs the United States, the scenario is that the United
00:28States too needs an India?
00:33Let me try and draw a kind of a balance sheet given the global situation and what the American
00:43priorities could be for Trump and for Kamala Harris in the two different scenarios.
00:50Number one, Trump is a very transactional person.
00:55I'm saying Trump first because Trump's performance as a president is a known quantity and therefore
01:02we can predicate our own analysis on what he did during his first presidency.
01:09Now, Trump was very transactional during the first presidency also, now being transactional
01:15is not bad.
01:16Every foreign policy can be transactional, but he also displayed very volatile behavior
01:23from time to time, very short term choices and very often one could see changes in the
01:30policy decisions depending upon, to say in a rather flippant manner, what his mood during
01:38the morning was, whether he got up on the right side or the wrong side and he could
01:43change his mind anytime without giving any indication to anyone that he was going to
01:47change.
01:48Now, the impact of that really would be if Trump on one day felt that Indian exposed
01:58to the United States is heavily impacted by low tariff duties and it is hurting the American
02:05interest as it is, he's actually imposing a tariff duty on all the imports.
02:10USA, he could suddenly decide that enough is enough and I'm going to increase the tariff
02:15on Indian imports.
02:16That would impact heavily on the Indian trade.
02:20Defense supplies, again, basically it would depend upon what he thinks will be his interest
02:27with the other powers.
02:29If the relationship with China were to start improving and he found that the trade interests
02:35are served better for the USA with China, he could take entirely a different decision
02:41At the same time, he could think that, yes, we can be with him strongly if the Chinese
02:50relationship has gone into a further adversarial.
02:54So you see, it changes.
02:56There is no permanence or there is no durability in the behavior.
02:59On the other hand, Kamala Harris, I think we can expect during Kamala Harris's time
03:07a much more kind of steady, durable and anticipated kind of a relationship where we can work out
03:15our policy choices on a long term basis rather than going through moment to moment.
03:21But then in the case of Kamala Harris, and we should not think of Kamala Harris as an
03:26Indian.
03:27I mean, she may be born of an Indian mother, but basically she's American and she's going
03:33to keep the American democratic policy at the center.
03:36Yes, yes, absolutely.
03:37For the Democrats, religious rights, human rights, etc., etc. are going to take the center
03:43core.
03:44And therefore, Kamala Harris may decide that the minority rights are not being in India,
03:50not what they should be.
03:51So what will she do?
03:53So we have to keep both the sides in the picture.
03:55But I think Kamala Harris will be a better bet for India than Trump, because at least
04:01we know what to expect with Kamala Harris.
04:04With Trump, it is difficult to make any predictions.
04:08Yes.
04:09That's my, that's my thinking, yes.
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