Opinion
Trump’s win: India will have to adapt to a shift in how the US engages the world
Summary
- Donald Trump’s election as US president will push the superpower’s policy inward and have significant implications for the world order. New Delhi will have to keep close watch of developments.
In the end it, was not as close as many were anticipating. Donald Trump performed much better than he did in the 2020 election and Kamala Harris could not match Joe Biden’s performance that year, resulting in a second term for Trump in the White House.
It was all over when Trump retook the US battleground state of Georgia, which he had narrowly lost four years ago, and then also won North Carolina, which shrunk Kamala Harris’s possible paths to victory. Harris could not win any of the battleground states—Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada—that were pivotal for her victory.
And unlike his 2016 win, Trump also managed to win the popular vote this time, making this the first time Republicans secured this prize since 1992.
Declaring it a “magnificent victory," Trump underlined in his victory speech to his supporters that “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate."
Also read: What Trump's win means for the Indian rupee
This is a remarkable comeback for Trump four years after he left Washington under a cloud of ignominy. He has created history by becoming the only US president after Grover Cleveland in 1892 to return to the White House after a hiatus.
For a leader who was indicted in four separate jurisdictions, convicted in New York City on 34 felony counts, impeached twice during his first term and left office with a favourability rating below 40%, this is indeed a staggering achievement.
This was also an extraordinary election, with two assassination attempts and a criminal trial against a candidate, and a last-minute change in the Democratic Party candidate from Biden to Harris. The rhetoric during the campaign often plumbed new lows, with America’s political polarization often seen as almost permanent.
Yet, against the backdrop of a disastrous performance by Democrats, Republicans also won a majority in the US Senate and are expected to retain control of the House of Representatives, though several races are still undecided.
This will ensure that Trump’s agenda will not face much pushback in the legislature. Trump’s victory is broad-based and a number of Republicans in the Senate and the House managed to ride on his coat-tails. He has reconfigured the Republican Party in his own image once again.
Given the high stakes in this election that both sides kept underlining to draw out their voter base, the turnout in 2024 has been the highest in modern American history.
But Harris did not manage to get the landslide support from women that was being expected. While a majority of women did support Kamala Harris, as per exit poll data, she failed to match the 57% who backed Joe Biden back in 2020.
Also read: A second Trump term is not good news—either for the US or the world
Strikingly, a third of American voters across African-American, Latino and Asian groups voted for Trump, even as his Caucasian support went down by a fraction. This upends the conventional wisdom on US voting preferences, as a new demographic reality confronts the American polity.
The country’s political landscape has been witnessing some far-reaching changes in recent years due to changes in the demographic support base of both parties.
The Republican Party is drawing in blue-collar and low-income voters and Democrats are over-reliant on college-educated youth and higher income groups, even as people of colour are no longer as enamoured with the party as they used to be.
This election was a stark reminder that Democrats have stopped speaking the language of a large number of US voters and they seem to have no plan of expanding their vote base. They seem to have become a party of Hollywood celebrities with little connect with the American heartland.
The Trump campaign, meanwhile, succeeded in linking Harris to an undercurrent of discontent brewing against the Biden administration because of rising costs of living, a surge in migration at the southern border and instability abroad. Despite her best efforts, trying to dissociate herself from Biden was a lost cause for Harris.
Harris and Trump represented two strikingly different views of the US—on immigration, trade cultural issues and foreign policy—and American voters have given their verdict.
Trump’s first term in office laid the foundations of a dramatic re-orientation in America’s engagement with the world, economically and strategically.
This is reflected in an exit poll which showed that despite the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as broader global instability, only 4% of respondents were concerned with foreign policy. An America that is leaning inwards has great implications for the world order.
Though India is better placed than many other countries vis-a-vis a Trump presidency, New Delhi will have to navigate the complexities of this shift in American strategic priorities carefully.
Also read: Mint Explainer: What Trump’s victory means for US, India and rest of the world
A strong partnership with the US is a cornerstone of India’s contemporary foreign-policy posture. India will have to adapt to evolving realties in the American political landscape.
Trump’s arrival with a bigger bang in 2024 than 2016 has demonstrated that his earlier victory was no fluke and it heralded a wider shift in America’s engagement with the rest of the world.
