The Daily Populous Wednesday August 13rd, 2025 morning edition
Authored by timesofindia.indiatimes.com and submitted by 1-randomonium

When Dmitry Grozoubinski started writing ‘Why Politicians Lie About Trade’, Joe Biden was in the White House. “I did not see the present developments coming,” he laughs. “It’s been great for my book sales, but not so great for the world.” The former Australian trade negotiator and diplomat who has trained officials from several countries, including India, speaks to Shruti Sonal about how trade policy became a frontline political weapon

Trump has doubled tariffs on India to 50% and even halted trade negotiations. Did you think that it would play out this way?

In a recent podcast, you described Trump as the world’s “apex predator” when it came to deals. What did you mean by that?

Given your Ukrainian roots, how do you see Trump’s criticism of India buying Russian oil?

Long before Trump, populist leaders have used tariffs and sanctions. How are his tactics different?

You’ve negotiated complex agreements at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Is this the end of the rules-based order in world trade?

It has also put the spotlight back on BRICS…

I have been following this negotiation and right from the start, one of the consistent things has been the lack of consistency. In a traditional negotiation — for example, between India and the UK — you had an Indian team who knew roughly what its govt wanted and would accept, and you had a UK team that knew what London would accept. They would negotiate and then bring the final big questions to the leaders. In this case, the US negotiating teams do not know for a fact what Donald Trump will accept. At the end of a phone call, there is a 50% chance of an announcement where everyone’s happy, and a 50% chance of a tariff escalation. When all of this kicked off, I had some optimism that India could do a reasonably good deal, or at least one that sort of turns the Trumpian ‘Eye of Sauron’ away from India and onto other targets because of the close personal relationship between Modi and Trump, and also because the Indian system itself is quite protectionist. I also naively thought that the US had a real strategic interest in making sure that they have a close working relationship with India. From the US perspective, India would be a natural ally in China’s neighbourhood that should be courted and should certainly not be pushed into deepening its engagement with the BRICS. What we saw this week is that none of that was enough.I think that Trump fundamentally believes that any negotiation is effectively kind of a power dynamic, where one side maximises the concessions it can extract and the weaker side gives up what it has to in the face of that power. To butcher a nature metaphor, it’s sort of him saying, “I am going to use US power to go and get things from others because we are the gorilla and they’re the monkeys”. The problem with that approach is that it puts other leaders in a position where they have to politically justify any concession they make because it is a national humiliation. Some countries will understand a degree of national humiliation. But when you come to someone like Modi, whose personal image is that of someone who is tough and who fights for India, you actually make it hard for him to do a particularly one-sided deal. It would be much, much easier for him to sell a deal with Trump if the latter did not have a tendency to then go on TV and be like ‘we own them’. That makes it harder for other countries to give up too much. And if you look at what Trump has actually managed to gain from most countries, it’s either fairly made-up stuff or not that much.I was born in Kharkiv, and was there just three months ago, sitting as drones crashed down around me in Kyiv. I don’t love the fact that India is buying Russian oil, but I have so much sympathy for the Indian govt because three months ago, I don’t think anyone knew what side of that war the US was even on. So, to turn around today and say, ‘As we’ve said all along, India’s purchases of Russian oil are unconscionable’ feels like a U-turn. Europe was able to wean itself off a lot of Russian oil and gas by throwing an insane amount of money at the problem, and even then, they’ve still got a huge amount of import. The idea that India can suddenly just flip a switch now that the Trump administration has decided that Russia’s not a friend is an insane prospect. Even if my politics are fairly loudly anti-Russian, it feels like Russia’s just an excuse.The scale is just nowhere close. It is a little bit like comparing nuclear war to a fistfight. The Trump administration finds tariffs appealing for a couple of reasons. First, they are one of the few levers of power that it can wield unilaterally due to a series of weird quirks of past legislation. If they wanted to raise taxes on anything in America, they would have to pass an Act of Congress and get it through the Senate. It would take months and be messy. On the other hand, he is able to wield tariff announcements like a scalpel or a flame-thrower to punish his enemies and reward his friends. Second, he believes he has a story that the American people have bought — that tariffs are paid by foreigners. And the reason tariffs and protectionism will always be rhetorically attractive is that politicians can pretend that the choice that’s being made is between locals and foreigners.The WTO, if you strip away all the pageantry, is a series of promises govts made to one another. It has always only been as strong as their commitment to those promises and to the premise those promises are built on. What we saw even before Trump’s second term is govts increasingly reassessing some of that calculation. India is among those countries that have said these promises require us to give up too much sovereignty and too much policy space in exchange for the predictability that they give. A legitimate debate that’s been raging at the WTO for 25 years. Obviously, it is bad for the system that the US is now just doing whatever it wants. I think the system, however, is holding on to the fact that he probably won’t be president forever…but who knows? (laughs) The more important thing to keep in mind here is that other countries haven’t started doing the same thing. You don’t see India and Sri Lanka start using tariffs as weapons against each other in violation of WTO rules because Trump is doing it. That’s giving people confidence that other countries still see value in the rules, especially now that they see what a lawless world might look like. India, for instance, was already making a bit of a trade policy push before Trump came in, but I think there’s been a real acceleration in concluding more free-trade agreements than ever.Regional integration organisation models are really hard to crack, and there’s a reason it's only ever really been done in Europe, and even that was considered a minor miracle. The five core BRICS members are not comfortable pooling sovereignty in that way. I keep having to remind people that China and India have literal border skirmishes, while Brazil's on the opposite side of the world. You're never going to get that same level of integration. With that being said, we've just seen the first visit by an Indian leader to China in decades. The US is in real danger of making BRICS work —despite itself.

theWireFan1983 on August 12nd, 2025 at 19:38 UTC »

The open support of Pakistan is the bigger problem. It is not received well in India that Pakistan made nuclear threats to India from US soil. And, I haven't seen any statements from US officials denouncing it. So, Indians will have to assume those are US approved statements.

Normal_Imagination54 on August 12nd, 2025 at 19:06 UTC »

In all honesty, the worst thing you can do if you want India to do or not do something, is to dictate terms to it, sort of like ultimatum.

If trump had only picked up the phone and worked it out with Modi, they may well have had a positive response. But to call India "dead economy", cozying up to terrorists leaders and then demanding they do something pretty much guarantees it will not happen.

1-randomonium on August 12nd, 2025 at 18:26 UTC »

> I have been following this negotiation and right from the start, one of the consistent things has been the lack of consistency. In a traditional negotiation — for example, between India and the UK — you had an Indian team who knew roughly what its govt wanted and would accept, and you had a UK team that knew what London would accept. They would negotiate and then bring the final big questions to the leaders. In this case, the US negotiating teams do not know for a fact what Donald Trump will accept. At the end of a phone call, there is a 50% chance of an announcement where everyone’s happy, and a 50% chance of a tariff escalation.

> When all of this kicked off, I had some optimism that India could do a reasonably good deal, or at least one that sort of turns the Trumpian ‘Eye of Sauron’ away from India and onto other targets because of the close personal relationship between Modi and Trump, and also because the Indian system itself is quite protectionist. I also naively thought that the US had a real strategic interest in making sure that they have a close working relationship with India. From the US perspective, India would be a natural ally in China’s neighbourhood that should be courted and should certainly not be pushed into deepening its engagement with the BRICS. What we saw this week is that none of that was enough.

These two paragraphs tell you what you need to know about the way Trump and his 'negotiating teams' do diplomacy. India is unfortunate in not having locked in a deal earlier because it would have kept Trump's attention away from them for at least a few months while he grappled with Russia, China and domestic issues. Now the 'Eye of Sauron' is fixed firmly on them.

> To butcher a nature metaphor, it’s sort of him saying, “I am going to use US power to go and get things from others because we are the gorilla and they’re the monkeys”. The problem with that approach is that it puts other leaders in a position where they have to politically justify any concession they make because it is a national humiliation. Some countries will understand a degree of national humiliation. But when you come to someone like Modi, whose personal image is that of someone who is tough and who fights for India, you actually make it hard for him to do a particularly one-sided deal. It would be much, much easier for him to sell a deal with Trump if the latter did not have a tendency to then go on TV and be like ‘we own them’.

See, if Trump had asked nicely, or asked firmly but behind closed doors, India could and would have stopped buying Russian oil. After all they stopped buying Iranian oil when Trump sanctioned them in his first term. As he did to Iran then, he could have squeezed Russia's money and maintained a cordial relationship with India. Instead he had to throw a tantrum and humiliate them, and in doing so pushed them firmly into Russia's orbit.

This is India's actual dilemma. It's not just about tariffs or Russian oil anymore; it's about sovereignty and respect. That's something Modi can't (publicly) compromise on, which his opposition and Indian voters won't let him compromise on, but which Trump and his advisors don't care about when it comes to other countries.