The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) demands that the Indian government should not succumb to the grant imperial designs of the Trump 2.0 in general and agrarian policies in particular. Any attempts to surrender to the US imperialism will be ferociously resisted.
Vijoo Krishnan, General Secretary
Ashok Dhawale, President
US President Donald Trump’s threat to accelerate tariff war on India and several other countries reiterates the plundering and exploitative nature of US imperialism. The Modi government is increasingly succumbing to the dictates of US imperialism and sacrificing the interests of the country, peasantry and other working people and the domestic industries. It is to be noted that this aggressive posturing of imperialism coincided with the development of a financial bubble in the US stock market. For instance, Nasdaq-100, an important US stock market index, is reportedly down 11% in the past month. S&P 500, another important index denoting the health of the stock market is also down. “American exceptionalism” in geopolitics as well as in the economic realm—as defined by the Wall Street financial press— is facing deep challenges. This explains the staggering speed in which Trump 2.0 issued around 90 executive orders—including those on multilateral trade and international relations— till date.
As soon as the US president assumed office, the Indian stock market recorded a loss of Rs 3724 crores on January 21, 2025. Foreign companies started withdrawing their investment from India. Right from the beginning of the Trump 2.0, the US administration has stated unequivocally that the Indian market for agricultural commodities is unnecessarily protected. Unless and until the domestic market for farm products and processed agri-food are open to US companies with reduced tariffs, the export from India will attract high tariffs with a purpose to stop exporting to the USA .
In the 2023-24 fiscal, India exported a total agricultural products worth US$48.15 billion. The US is one of the important buyers of agricultural products from India and the leading items include, among others, rice, marine products and spices. The reason why the US has been importing from India is that India exports to the US at the lowest price possible because of the lack of Minimum Support Price (MSP) for farmers as well as the fact that minimum wage is denied to agricultural workers in most of the states in the country. Hushing up this, Trump is arguing that India has a trade surplus with the US worth US$45.6 billion in 2023-24. India has a relatively high level of domestic market protection because of the significant farm dependent population who constitutes the major chunk of the rural working people. The total population of the cultivators in India is higher than the total population of the US. Precisely for this reason, the average tariff rate in India is 12% which is comparatively higher to the average rate of tariff of the US.
The Modi government’s conspicuous silence at a time when US is trying to ensure a conducive atmosphere for unconditional entry of US giant agro-industries and agro-traders to the Indian market exposes the class politics of the fascistic RSS, which controls BJP. The neocolonial arrogant language used by the US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick in his gospel on what India should do in agriculture is clear intervention in internal politics of India. Lutnick’s war cry for a “grand” broad based Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and US is nothing but an “extraordinary opportunity” for the US monopolies eyeing Indian agriculture.In the meeting between Trump and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi last month, India has agreed to work on the first segment of a deal by the fall of 2025. However, Lutnick’s statements on BRICS and dedollarisation phenomenon exposes the growing insecurity of the US establishment on any kind of initiative that can challenge the hegemony of the US empire. Lutnick’s another argument that India should stop buying Russian defence equipments to gain the “love and affection” of the US empire is outrightly ridiculous.
The All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) demands that the Indian government should not succumb to the grant imperial designs of the Trump 2.0 in general and agrarian policies in particular. Any attempts to surrender to the US imperialism will be ferociously resisted.
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