Is Donald Trump better for India or Joe Biden? S Jaishankar answers

India has bi-partisan, or in a sense, non-partisan support in American politics, says external affairs minister S Jaishankar

Updated on: Sep 9, 2020, 12:08:12 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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India’s partnership with the United States will continue to grow whether a Republican or Democrat is elected to the White House in the November elections, external affairs minister S Jaishankar has suggested. Jaishankar’s assertion comes against the backdrop of the two sides competing to woo the 1.2 million Indian-American community that has emerged as a key constituency in battleground states that could settle the race with wafer-thin margins.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said the last four US presidents had raised the level of relationship with India further. (PTI)

“If you look at the last four American presidents, two Republicans and two Democrats — each very different from the other. Yet, each raised the level of relationship with India further,” Jaishankar said in response to a question if Donald Trump was better for India, or Joe Biden.

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“Each President has developed on the legacy of the previous one when it comes to India. And if you follow the debates in the US now, you will find many differences between the competing candidates, but India is a common point,” Jaishankar said in an interview with Hindustan Times on Saturday. The minister stressed that though candidates criticised each other on many policies, this didn’t happen when ties with India is the topic.

“I actually believe that India has bipartisan, or in a sense non-partisan, support in American politics. Our footprint is very wide and so is our acceptability. Different sets of politicians who disagree on many things agree on India. And I think that is a very good place to be,” the minister said.

Also Read: 2020 is special for Indian-Americans in US politics

The approach of the two parties towards Indian Americans is seen to reflect their standpoint on India as well.

Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president has named Senator Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, as his running mate.

Donald Trump had been working on this constituency for quite some time, like when he accompanied Prime Minister Narendra Modi last September to the ‘Howdy, Modi!’ event in Houston, a rare Democratic stronghold in Republican-dominated Texas. Five months later, Trump flew 17 hours to India for a quick 36-hour visit, mostly to address the ‘Namaste Trump’ event in Gujarat.

Also Read: Donald Trump woos Indian-American voters, with clips from Howdy Modi

A majority of the Indian-Americans voters have traditionally been seen to support the Democrats; a survey of Asian Americans suggested that 55% of Indian Americans who voted in the 2016 election held a “very unfavorable” to “somewhat unfavorable” view of Trump. The US President has been trying to change this voting pattern. At the Gujarat event, he did hold out hopes of sealing a “very big trade” deal with India and showered praises on PM Modi who reciprocated generously.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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