EXECUTIVE

Trump administration was expected to roll back elements of liberal America. But this is a riveting horror show

WE’RE NOT WILLING to be wrong on this subject,” White House chief of staff Reince Priebus has said of President Trump’s stated commitment to preventing terrorist attacks in the US, but the reactions to the executive order of Friday suggest that he isn’t quite right. A ban of 120 days on refugees, a permanent ban on Syrian refugees and a 90-day bar on the entry of citizens of seven Muslim-majority nations — including Green Card holders — has sparked off a fresh wave of domestic protests, and Trump appears to be ruling over a populace in permanent revolt. Silicon Valley has denounced the executive order and offered legal protection to immigrant employees, who form the backbone of the IT industry. The taxi aggregator Lyft has committed to donating $ 1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully sued to prevent the authorities from deporting travellers, and Starbucks proposes to hire 10,000 refugees.

Elsewhere, UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn insists that Trump must be banned from British shores. A petition seeking a bar on state visits crossed 1 million signatures in 24 hours. The UK parliament must consider for debate all petitions to which at least 1 lakh people sign on. Prime Minister Theresa May faces flak for failing to denounce Trump with sufficient vim. France, Germany and Indonesia (which has the world’s largest Muslim population) have spoken against the policy. Pakistan may also face curbs and if the list grows, there could be a diplomatic backlash from the targeted Muslim-majority nations.

Most damaging is the revelation by presidential aide Rudy Giuliani that Trump had originally proposed a “Muslim ban”, which would have been unconstitutional, but his team refocused to target nations which, ostensibly, posed a danger to the US. Replacing religion with geography may have plugged domestic legal issues, but the war of perceptions internationally has been lost. Diplomacy was perceived to be the least impressive attribute of Trump’s vision. Early on, the new president had riled Beijing by talking freely with Taiwan. In response to the rhetoric about American jobs lost to China and India, Jack Ma warned of commercial issues which could escalate into a full-scale trade war which would harm global markets. Now, President Trump has moved to protect the American people in his own way, which includes the temporary loss of liberty of the citizens of blacklisted nations when they reach US airports. If steps to protect American jobs and companies follow, their impact will be felt even more drastically across the world, as labour and capital quit American shores. The country’s institutions and civil society have proved to be resilient, but it remains to be seen if they can hold firm for the long term. DENG XIAOPING WAS highly skilled but he had something more valuable: Luck. Starting his economic reforms in 1978 meant that China caught a 30-year supercycle of global economic growth, manufacturing offshoring and global trade liberalisation. The third was important. The WTO mission of removing sand in the wheels of global trade culminating in China’s membership was enabled by “no trade-off politics” in the US that allowed American politicians to keep almost everybody happy — employers, consumers, investors, pensioners, importers and exporters. Low wage workers were uneasy but for a while, their hesitations were blunted by their joy in lower prices as consumers. No longer; they asserted their rights as citizens in Trump’s election.

Trump’s inauguration speech promised to follow “two simple rules; we will buy American and hire American” and his visa blacklist suggests he knows who elected him. Giving American voters the benefit of doubt that Trump’s victory was driven by economics rather than race and religion, what does it mean for Indian IT companies and policymakers?

America and India have been open to each other in three ways over the last 50 years: People, goods and services, capital. People openness is chronicled in a wonderful new book The Other One Percent by Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur and Nirvikar Singh that chronicles the journey of 3.8 million Indians in America that began with a 1965 immigration law that replaced the national-origins quota system (biased towards Europeans) with a preference system based on skills and family relationships. In 2014, India was the largest source of new immigrants to America (1,47,000), higher than China (1,32,000), and Mexico (1,30,000) but as a group, Indian immigrants have so far “not been perceived as problematic” because they are “not poor, segregated, unemployed, illegal, criminal or culturally different”.

This people openness is the foundation for a goods and services trade surplus for