Trumpet call: How a second Trump term will affect US ties with India and Nepal
This story was written by Shristi Karki and originally published in the Nepali Times on November 6, 2024. An edited version is republished on Global Voices as part of a content-sharing agreement.
A shock wave is rolling across the United States over the return of Donald Trump to the White House, as well as the Republican control of the Senate and possibly the House. However, the consequences of this vote will impact not just America, but also people across the world.
In South Asia, it will mainly change the way Washington views and deals with China and India, along with more unpredictable consequences. The impact on Nepal will be governed by how US relations with the country’s two giant neighbours develop in the next four years.
“Compared to Harris, who has been focused more on multilateralism and maintaining allies, Trump is more confrontational and unilateral,” says National Assembly member and former Foreign Minister Bimala Rai Paudyel. “There is fear that Trump’s policies will push the world to become even more polarised than it is now.”
India and China will both be able to fill the gap left by Trump America’s retreat from global and regional leadership. They will be able to take advantage of Trump diluting relations with or abandoning traditional allies in Europe and Asia.
Although India has strong ties with the West, New Delhi has long wanted to call its own shots. It is using its growing economic clout to turn away from the EU and the US. For example, India has got away with importing oil from Russia despite Western sanctions. This is likely to increase under a Trump presidency.
Akhilesh Upadhyay, senior fellow at the Strategic Affairs Center, Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS), says: “From a traditional security perspective, Nepal is bang in the middle of China and India. China and America have a great power rivalry, and it is unclear which way [the] Indian axis will go.”
India could also benefit if Trump follows through on threats of more tariffs on Chinese imports. Even though the Biden-Harris administration has been punishing China with tariffs and other barriers, Trump has in the past been more belligerent toward Beijing.
“On the one hand, India is close to [the] US in Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad); on the other hand, it takes part in BRICS where it works with Russia and China, and the Shanghai Cooperation. It remains to be seen how the US relationship plays out with our two big neighbours,” adds Upadhyay.
Since the enemy of an enemy is a friend, Washington has regarded India as its bulwark against increased Chinese economic and military clout. But New Delhi has not always gone along with US strategic interests and rankles about the US being too involved with India’s smaller neighbours, like Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.
Image via Nepali Times, used with permission.
On the downside, a Trump administration could curb the influx of Indian IT workers in the US and also scale back US job opportunities for Nepali students, which were ample under the Biden administration.
Some experts say which party is in the White House will not affect South Asian policy and Nepal even less, but a Trump win could mean less development assistance to Nepal, particularly in reproductive health, human rights and social safety.
Nischal Pandey at the Centre for South Asian Studies in Kathmandu says that the few state-level visits between the US and Nepal — from King Mahendra’s address to the joint session of US Congress during President Eisenhower's tenure in 1960 to Ganesh Man Singh being received at the White House by President Bush Sr after 1990, to US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit in 2002 during George HW Bush’s term — have all been during Republican administrations.
He adds, “Historically, Republican presidents and administrations have been more interested in Nepal than Democratic ones.”
More directly, Nepalis aspiring to migrate to the United States could find it more difficult. There are currently about 300 Nepalis waiting in Mexico for human traffickers to smuggle them into the United States, and that border is going to be tightened even more.
Earlier this year, São Paulo airport in Brazil had over 150 Nepalis stranded after arriving to take the Darien Gap backdoor to the US. Another 200 headed out to Brazil were stuck at Addis Ababa airport, forcing Ethiopia to ban visas to Nepalis.
Trump has threatened a high tariff on Mexican imports if it does not stop migrants. He plans to deport 11 million undocumented people.
Trump’s strong rhetoric on China could be bargaining brinkmanship, and it will be interesting to see how he balances this with Sino-Russian alignment. Biden did not roll back bans on Huawei and restrictions on TikTok, and US security concerns about China’s rise is a bipartisan issue, just as Gaza is. Harris would likely not have done things differently in those sectors.
MP Bimala Rai Paudyal says: “Trump’s win could cause economic tensions with China, which will affect trade here as well; this is something we will need to prepare for.”
America’s moral authority to lecture countries like Nepal on transitional justice, human rights, democracy, and press freedom will be diminished during the second Trump term.
Reproductive rights and support for family planning projects in Nepal through the UN system may also fall as it did during his earlier presidency. Foreign aid through USAID could also be cut.
Perhaps the more indirect impact of Trump's presidency on Nepal, however, will be his rollback on America’s commitment to curb climate change, which will accelerate the melting of the Himalayan icecaps with a major impact on the water supply downstream in Asia.
“America’s climate commitments and goals will be impacted by Trump, who doesn’t believe in climate change,” says Paudyal. “The current work on loss and damage, and carbon trading depends significantly on US funding, and the world looks to the US to be proactive.”
If Trump can bring the Ukraine war to a close by cosying up to Putin, a peace deal may improve the fuel and food situation globally. There are thousands of Nepalis in the Russian Army; at least 40 have died, and they could finally come home.
Upadhyay concludes: “As for Nepal, the Trump administration should see Nepal as a sovereign nation on its own right rather than through the prism of great power rivalry either between the US and China.”
