Donald Trump's utopian America 'would look like India', says Bloomberg

New York: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s now famous campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again” has fired up legion’s of his supporters promising an utopian America, but Bloomberg News on Tuesday pointed out that it would actually look like India. [caption id=“attachment_3072684” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Donald Trump. AP[/caption] “Donald Trump may never have an opportunity to put his nationalist economic ideas into practice, but they are almost certain to outlive his campaign. Many workers have come to believe that free trade kills jobs and that they and the US economy overall would be better off if more stuff was made at home rather than in China or Mexico,” wrote Michael Schuman on Bloomberg News. “The trouble is, we already have a pretty good idea of what this America would look like. It would look like India,” added the Bloomberg report. Schuman, has been a journalist in Asia for over 16 years, and the India he scorches is the India that had not undergone sweeping free market reforms. Former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao rescued India from decades of jerry-rigged Nehruvian socialism by restructuring the economy in 1991 and unleashing liberalisation, setting us on our current growth path. “I don’t mean today’s India, the world’s fastest-growing big economy, which has opened itself up to trade and foreign investment. I’m talking about the India I saw on my first trip there in 1991, after the country had endured years of socialist economic planning,” wrote Schuman. “Part of the problem was that India, like many emerging economies, was deeply suspicious of trade,” noted the journalist. Trump has promoted himself as the ultimate business man but during this election cycle he has embraced xenophobia and fierce anti-free trade rhetoric. He has blasted the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) for destroying American manufacturing jobs although trade data show that Nafta helps Americans. Trump has not only slammed free trade but also talked of hiking taxes on foreign imports and penalising companies like Apple and General Motors that ship jobs overseas. The article goes on to mention that the sort of policies Trump would need to introduce would somewhat resemble India’s own import-substitution programme with similar effects. Indian business leaders have expressed their own concerns about Trump’s tough trade beliefs. In his 2011 book Time To Get Tough, Trump advocated a 15 percent tax on companies for outsourcing jobs to places like India, and a 20 percent tax for importing goods and services.