Comment by Riaz Haq on Wednesday

Sushant Singh
@SushantSin
These guys in the Trump orbit seem to have complete disdain for Modi's India.

https://x.com/SushantSin/status/1960694262254727417

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Shashank Mattoo
@MattooShashank
Fox News Anchor: Do you worry that India will set trade in the rupee and not the dollar? (Laughs)

US Treasury Secretary: There are a lot of things I worry about. The rupee becoming a reserve currency is not one of them. The rupee is at an all time low against the US dollar

https://x.com/MattooShashank/status/1960687351425814934

Comment by Riaz Haq on Thursday

Shashank Mattoo
@MattooShashank
Trump Adviser Peter Navarro: Everyone in America loses because of India buys oil from Russia. US taxpayers have to send money for Modi’s war in Ukraine

Anchor (confused): You mean Putin’s war?

Navarro: No I mean Modi’s war!

https://x.com/MattooShashank/status/1960859288651362398

Comment by Riaz Haq on Thursday

H1-B visa system is a 'scam', will change it, says US Commerce Secretary Lutnick - The Economic Times

https://m.economictimes.com/nri/work/h1-b-visa-system-is-a-scam-wil...

Calling the H1-B visa system a "scam", US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said that he is going to change its process because it's terrible. The Donald Trump administration is planning a major overhaul of the United States’ H-1B visa and green card systems, signalling a shift towards wage-based immigration and merit-driven selection.

Lutnick on Monday said he is involved in the proposed reforms, which aim to replace the current lottery-based system with a more selective model. “We're going to change the Green Card. We give green cards - the average American makes $75,000 a year and the average green card recipient $66,000 a year,” Lutnick told Fox News, questioning, “Why are we doing that? It’s like picking the bottom core.”

The proposed changes are expected to include eliminating the H-1B lottery system and introducing a wage-based allocation, where visas are given to higher-earning applicants first. A draft rule to this effect was approved by the US office of information and regulatory affairs earlier this month.

Currently, the H-1B program, widely used by the tech industry, has an annual cap of 85,000 visas. Each spring, a random lottery decides which employers can proceed with visa petitions. In 2021, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had proposed allocating H-1B slots based on wage levels divided into four tiers.

During the first Trump administration, DHS sought to replace the random selection with a wage-priority system. The proposed rule would rank petitions based on wages offered, divided into four tiers, prioritising higher-paid jobs. This effort was part of the administration’s “Buy American, Hire American” policy to ensure H-1B visas favored highly skilled and well-compensated foreign workers.


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https://www.business-standard.com/immigration/us-h-1b-visa-a-scam-i...

H-1B visa programme a scam? Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and several other Republicans believe so. Speaking to Fox News on Wednesday, DeSantis called H-1B a “total scam”, saying it enables companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labour, mainly from India.

DeSantis claimed companies often made American employees train H-1B workers before laying them off. “Most of them (H-1Bs) are from one country, India, there’s a cottage industry about how all those people make money off this system,” he said.

He added that artificial intelligence was already displacing young American workers and asked why the country should “be importing foreign workers when we have our own people that we need to take care of”.

Pressed on divisions in Donald Trump’s cabinet over the policy, DeSantis said: “I think you’re right to say the H-1B, it’s become a total scam. These companies game the system. Some of these companies are laying off large numbers of Americans while also hiring new H-1B workers and renewing existing H-1B visas.”

Comment by Riaz Haq on Thursday

Shashank Mattoo
@MattooShashank
BREAKING: Trump administration announces new student visa restrictions

The new rule will limit the amount of time students can study in America

Currently, over 300,000 Indians are studying in America

https://x.com/MattooShashank/status/1960911122116079987

Comment by Riaz Haq yesterday

Why Trump’s Tariffs on India Are Part of a Wider Geopolitical Game: George Friedman – The Singju Post

https://singjupost.com/transcript-why-trumps-tariffs-on-india-are-p...

https://youtu.be/dgPROuLq2gA

India’s Strategic Value to the US
GEORGE FRIEDMAN: Well, the relationship between US and India has been moderately good. But India is not an essential country from the American standpoint. We have fundamental allies that we need badly, and then allies which we give, lose or win doesn’t much matter. India goes into that category.

When the Chinese cut were unable to continue to sell to the United States, everybody looked at India as an alternative. It’s not. It’s far from the level of the Chinese economy. And therefore, while we had good relations, this was an opportunity at the cost to India, which we didn’t much mind to both signal things to the Chinese and Russians, which we do mind. So different signals to both sides. But on the other hand, India is not a critical element in our strategy.

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GEORGE FRIEDMAN: Well, trust is not a major term in international relations. Interest is we did not do these things with India before. We’ve had a non confrontational strategy toward China. We’ve not done anything particularly aggressive against China. China has on a number of occasions done some things aggressive against our allies. We’ve been defensive but passive in that.

So when you ask the question, what’s more important in the United States, a changed relationship with China, a changed attitude on the part of Russia or a relationship with India? If you have to ask the question, which is the most dangerous things in there? It’s Russia and China, which is least in that configuration? It’s India.

So if you can signal and then turn around and drop tariffs too, if it works, if you can just signal to the Russians that we will raise tariffs on anyone who trades with you and we’ll start with one of your biggest customers and the strongest, that’s helpful. Same with the Chinese side. If we signal that we are not going to go to war with you, that’s a good signal.

Strategic Unpredictability as Foreign Policy
In other words, when you are engaged in diplomacy or buying a house, there are two things you do. You act like you don’t want it and then you manipulate it until you can get your best price. Diplomacy is not necessarily best a consistent policy. Doing the unexpected. Sometimes when you’re carefully moderated, and this was carefully moderated, doing the unexpected and feeling the pressure is a possible way to reach an accommodation.

India was in this sense a victim, a minor, relatively minor cost to the Indians, certainly nothing to break relations over. On the other hand, it did signal to the Chinese that we’re not going to be going to war with them, which they worried about India and to the Russians that we really are going to impose tariffs. The most useless thing to do is say we’re going to really hurt you and never hurt them. The other thing not to say is, we’re going to attack you and then attack them. So in both cases, diplomacy consists both of having some advantages presented and some disadvantages, and this did both.

Comment by Riaz Haq 15 hours ago

Donald Trump scraps plans to visit India for Quad Summit amid trade tensions: NYT - Hindustan Times

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/donald-trump-scra...

US President Donald Trump “no longer has plans” to visit India later this year for the Quad Summit, The New York Times claimed on Saturday, as it detailed how relations between the American leader and Prime Minister Narendra Modi “unraveled” over the last few months.

In the report titled 'The Nobel Prize and a Testy Phone Call: How the Trump-Modi Relationship Unraveled’, the NYT, citing people familiar with Trump’s schedule, said that “After telling Mr Modi that he would travel to India later this year for the Quad summit, Mr Trump no longer has plans to visit in the fall.”

There was no official comment from either the US or India on the NYT's claim.

India to host Quad summit
India is scheduled to host the Quad summit later this year.

The Trump administration hosted the Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in January this year, a day after Trump took the oath of office as President for a second term in the White House.

Amid trade tensions between Delhi and Washington, the NYT article gives an account of how relations between Trump and Modi “unraveled” after Trump’s repeated claims of solving the four-day conflict in May between India and Pakistan, an assertion denied by India.

“President Trump’s repeated claims about having 'solved' the India-Pakistan war infuriated Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India. And that was only the beginning,” the NYT article said, adding that Modi was “losing patience” with Trump.

Trump and Modi had spoken over the phone on June 17, a 35-minute phone call that happened as Trump returned to Washington from the G7 Summit in Canada, which PM Modi also attended.

Modi and Trump were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, but Trump returned to Washington early. Before departing Kananaskis and wrapping up his first visit to Canada in a decade, Modi had a phone conversation with Trump in Washington.

Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri had said in a video message from Kananaskis that Modi clearly conveyed to Trump that at “no point” during the days following Operation Sindoor was there any discussion, at any level, on an India-US trade deal, or any proposal for a mediation by the US between India and Pakistan.

The discussion to cease military action took place directly between India and Pakistan through the existing channels of communication between the two armed forces, and it was initiated at Pakistan's request. Prime Minister Modi firmly stated that India does not and will never accept mediation, Misri had said.

The NYT article said that during the June 17 phone call, Trump said again how proud he was of ending the military escalation and mentioned that Pakistan was going to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, an honour that has been bestowed on former US President Barack Obama and one for which Trump has been “openly campaigning”.

“The not-so-subtle implication, according to people familiar with the call, was that Mr Modi should do the same,” and also nominate Trump for the Nobel, the paper said.

“The Indian leader bristled. He told Mr Trump that US involvement had nothing to do with the recent ceasefire. It had been settled directly between India and Pakistan,” the NYT said.

“Trump largely brushed off Mr Modi’s comments, but the disagreement — and Mr Modi’s refusal to engage on the Nobel — has played an outsize role in the souring relationship between the two leaders, whose once-close ties go back to Mr. Trump’s first term,” the NYT said.

The NYT noted that the White House did not acknowledge the June 17 call, nor did Trump post about it on his social media accounts. Trump has repeated his claim of stopping the conflict between India and Pakistan over 40 times since May 10.

Comment by Riaz Haq 8 hours ago

While Trump Rattles the World, China Basks in the Limelight - The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/world/while-trump-rattles-the-world-china-basks...

BEIJING—The leaders of three of the world’s four most powerful nations will meet in China this weekend to discuss how to react to the upending of the international order wrought by the fourth: the U.S. under President Trump.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping is set to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently being wooed by Washington, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose country—long cultivated by the U.S. as a centerpiece of its aspirations to contain Beijing—has just been slapped by punitive American tariffs.

They will be joined by several other national leaders, including those from Turkey, Indonesia and Pakistan, at a summit in the Chinese city of Tianjin that starts Sunday and aims to showcase Beijing’s global economic and political clout.

Putin and some of these guests will then stand alongside Xi, North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, and the presidents from countries as far afield as Cuba and Zimbabwe, to watch the Sept. 3 military parade in Beijing. The event will celebrate the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Japan in World War II—or, as China calls it, the Victory of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance.

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To some in the Trump administration, the outreach to Putin at the expense of Ukraine and European security makes sense as part of a “reverse Kissinger” approach. The grand idea is to drive a wedge between Russia, which is seen as a power that could be accommodated, and China, which is considered a challenge to America’s global pre-eminence.

In a Fox News interview after the summit in Alaska, Trump openly mused about how Russia and China are “basically natural enemies” and blamed former President Joe Biden for bringing them together. “Russia has tremendous amounts of land. China has tremendous amounts of people, and China needs Russian land,” he said.

The entire population of Russia’s Far East region, which accounts for 40% of its territory, is fewer than eight million people, or smaller than the number of inhabitants in a medium-size Chinese city like Shenyang or Foshan.

During the first Trump administration, Chinese officials were genuinely alarmed by the prospect of a U.S. rapprochement with Russia at Beijing’s expense, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin and an expert on Sino-Russian relations. But today, he said, they no longer consider it a serious concern because of just how dependent Russia has become on China as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.

“The Chinese understand that Russia is in their pocket to a much greater extent than before the war, and they also understand that because of Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, a normalization of Russian relations with the West as a whole remains impossible,” Gabuev said. “Xi and Putin also know just how mercurial Trump is—and that the Russians can’t trust any American promises and inducements.”

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