US President Donald Trump’s harsh decision to impose a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports to the US has begun to bite. There are reports of layoffs by exporters of labour-intensive products such as textiles.
Trump’s announcement on H-1B visas’ curtailment has disproportionately impacted Indian tech companies and Indian techies who have been the main beneficiaries of these visas. The Trump administration has also demonstrably changed course on its South Asia policies, with Pakistani Chief of Army Staff, Field Marshal Asim Munir, and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif being received in the White House with exceptional warmth.
Over the past month, Trump has made soothing noises towards Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His peevishness towards India, though—best captured by the Hindi word ‘khundak’, meaning 'grudge'—continues.
Modi is going out of his way to praise Trump, even when it has been premature to do so, most recently with the 20-point Gaza Peace Plan. Warmly welcoming Trump's plan, Modi called on “all concerned” to rally behind the US President's efforts to bring peace, a tweet which Trump retweeted as well.
On 3 October, Hamas responded to the plan by agreeing only to two issues:
That it would release all hostages in its custody as well as the remains of the dead hostages.
That it agreed to hand over the administration of Gaza to Palestinian technocrats.
The fundamental issues involving Gaza are not covered in Hamas’ response. Nor has it agreed to extinguish its own existence, a key Israeli and US demand.