In an exclusive interview with India Today TV, Ian Bremmer shared his insights on the implications of Donald Trump's second term for the US, India and the world.
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00:00Hello and welcome. The world is going through greater geopolitical uncertainty than it has
00:08at any point in time in the recent past. And to talk about what the post-Trump world means
00:15for India and the rest of the world, we're here at the World Economic Forum at Davos
00:20and kicking off our coverage with the world's number one political risk guru, Ian Bremmer.
00:26Mr. Bremmer, thank you very much for taking your time.
00:28Sure, good to be here.
00:29When there's so much buzz around what Trump becoming president again could mean, who better
00:34than you, whose job it is to delve in uncertainty and probability. So thank you.
00:38Yeah, good to be back.
00:39Trump takes over and everyone's wondering what are amongst the first few things he's
00:43likely to do.
00:46He's going to be in such a stronger position than he was last time around. So I mean, his
00:53election agenda, his promises on deportations of illegal migrants, his promises on tariffs
01:01on other countries. I mean, these are actually going to be implemented to a much greater
01:06degree than I think anybody expects. And he's going to make much bigger demands of other
01:10countries around the world, right? He wants the Russia-Ukraine war over. He wants the
01:14Middle East wars over. He wants other countries to address and align their economies and their
01:20political decision making more closely with the United States or else. The point is that
01:26in 2017, you and I were in Davos in 2017 and President Trump, you know, was not nearly
01:34as well respected, as not nearly as well listened to as he is going to be this time around.
01:40So the transition is very dramatic.
01:42I don't know if the respect has changed very much, but his position of authority most certainly
01:45has.
01:47It's not a respect. Well, and actually, for some leaders, it's a respect for who he is.
01:51I mean, you know, we've got the inauguration happening today and Giorgio Meloni, a G7 world
01:57leader, is there. That would not have happened in 2017. Javier Millet from Argentina presiding
02:05over one of the best stories in the world today economically is going there to see him.
02:11There are a lot of leaders in the world that legitimately feel more aligned with Trump
02:18than did back in 2017. So some of it, I think, actually, some of it is respect, even if you
02:23may think it's misplaced respect, but clearly respect for power. That is something that
02:29everybody is feeling right now.
02:31He also seems far more certain of what he's doing, more in control, looked at from far
02:37closer to the action. How do you see Trump 2.0 being different from what the world saw
02:41the first time?
02:42Well, domestically, Trump has control of the GOP, where in 2017, the Republicans had coattails
02:53that Trump had to ride. So not only does he have the House, does he have the Senate, does
02:58he have a 6-3 judicial majority, but also all of the appointees are loyalist to Trump.
03:06There's nobody like Mike Pence or Gary Cohn. There's nobody like Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo
03:16or Jim Mattis. I mean, literally every person he has appointed, some of them are well-respected,
03:22some of them are not, but they all share a willingness to do what Trump wants.
03:28So the first point is that he's truly consolidated power domestically. The second point is that
03:34the United States, from a relational perspective, is in a much better position than other countries.
03:39Their enemies, their adversaries, Russia's in severe decline. Now, they weren't in 2017.
03:45Iran has just lost their empire by proxy in the Middle East. Not the case in 2017. China's
03:51having the worst economic period since the 90s, maybe the 70s, not the case in 2017.
03:57And even America's allies, who aren't in that bad condition, but their politics, of course,
04:02are a lot worse. Look at countries like South Korea and Germany and Canada, where their
04:07governments are falling apart. Look at even the anti-incumbent sentiments in places like
04:12France and in the UK. So, I mean, the Americans, with their economy coming out of the pandemic
04:17much stronger than any of their peers, also are in a much stronger political position.
04:23So I think that when you look at Trump wanting to undo an American global order, which is
04:30unheard of, really. We've never experienced that. That's why the geopolitics are unstable.
04:34But he's also in a much stronger position to be able to affect that, that he was not
04:38the first term at all.
04:40Let's spend some time on what Trump could mean for India. The one issue that's got a
04:45lot of people worked up is immigration, because A, is his approach on illegal immigrants.
04:50There's also a big debate raging in the United States over H1B visas. What do you think is
04:54most likely going to happen on the issue of immigration, legal and illegal?
04:58On illegal immigration, Trump won the election in large part on that issue. It was one of
05:03the top issues for many people, the top issue. And not only that, but one that the Democrats
05:08really failed to address. So he feels very strongly about it. He feels like even if it
05:14leads to higher inflation in the United States, and it will, lower tax revenue, I mean, lower
05:20consumption, all those things are true, but he's going to address it.
05:23You are looking at 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants in the United States right now.
05:27I would not be surprised if 1 million of them are forcibly deported in the first year.
05:32Well, where will they go and who will take them?
05:34Well, they'll go back, number one. I mean, so Trump has already told the Mexicans, if
05:38you're not willing to take everybody, including some from countries that came through Mexico,
05:44but aren't necessarily from Mexico. You know, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum,
05:49has said she doesn't want to do that, but we know that there's a negotiation there.
05:53So I mean, the reality is they're not going to be welcome in the United States, and America
05:59can cause a lot of damage if you are the country that they came from and you refuse to deal
06:05with that, you refuse to engage. So those numbers are going to be big.
06:09On the H1Bs, you saw the fight between Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, who looks like he's
06:16already forced out of Doge and it hasn't even started yet. That's quite something. Level
06:21of uncertainty among the appointees is always a question, but they very much support H1Bs
06:27and legal immigration, especially among more skilled workers. But a lot of what I would
06:32call deep MAGA, as opposed to dark MAGA, not the globalists, but instead the populists
06:38that support Trump. They're not interested. They don't want immigration of any sort. Now,
06:43if you ask me who's likely to win, usually Trump goes with the money, right? And these
06:47are people that donated a lot to his campaign. Elon Musk is by far the most powerful advisor
06:53around Trump. So I don't expect that there are going to be big problems around H1Bs.
06:58Now, there are a lot of Indians that might look at anti-immigrant sentiment in the United
07:06States and say, I don't feel very welcome in America. I mean, you know, the Statue of
07:11Liberty today doesn't reflect American values. It did after World War II. It did after World
07:18War I. It doesn't today. So it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of talented Indians who can work
07:24anywhere in the world, they're coming from the best universities, they have incredibly
07:29fungible skills, maybe a lot more of them will go to Canada. Maybe a lot more of them
07:33will go other places. And I think that's a concern because it's not just about setting
07:37legal policy for the United States. It's also about, are you welcoming to people from
07:43all over the world? America first doesn't sound very welcoming, right? A lot of women
07:49from India might say, I'm not very interested in going to a country where they're actually
07:53taking back women's rights. A lot of gay people might say, no, I'm not so interested, given
07:58what I hear from the U.S. right now. So I do think that the values, the fact that the
08:02Americans don't really know what they stand for in terms of values right now, will have
08:06a chilling effect on some legal immigration.
08:09Is Elon Musk at the moment the second most powerful man in the United States?
08:13Yes.
08:14Do you see his bromance with Donald Trump continue, or could these two mercurial people
08:18have a blowout?
08:19He's clearly the most powerful not president in the United States. And in some ways that
08:23was true even before Trump was elected, given his role in the public square, given his role
08:31in the military, industrial, technological complex with SpaceX in particular. I think
08:36now that Trump has been elected and that Elon has spent more time with him than anyone else
08:43without question, and has even sort of inserted himself in legislation directly, even though
08:49he has no official appointment, though we're told he will have an office in the White House,
08:53another norm being broken and being normalized by the United States.
08:57And lots of conflict of interest.
08:59Lots of conflict of interest.
09:00How can that not matter?
09:01Lots of conflict of interest with Trump setting up for himself and for his wife, cryptocurrencies
09:08that people are putting billions of dollars into. None of this is normal. None of this
09:13is leading by example. If Narendra Modi would have meetings with a head of state or a CEO
09:21and bring in Gautam Adani, I promise you in Davos they would be calling India banana republic.
09:27They would say, what are you doing? But when the most powerful country in the world does
09:30it, it's not a banana republic. It is a new order. It's a new way of doing things. And
09:37you have to react to it. So what's happening is that we are embracing what I call a GZERO
09:44world, right? The law of the jungle, that the strong do what they want and the weak
09:50suffer what they must. And that's a that's a very dangerous position to be in. It's not
09:55one that people expected from the world and specifically not from the United States since
10:02the Soviet Union collapsed. Look, American values, as you and I know, and we've debated
10:06this before, they're they're frequently hypocritical. They're not equally implemented. It's not
10:12like the United States has always been a paragon of exceptionalism around the world. Look at
10:17the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Look in Guantanamo. Look at the financial crisis,
10:21all of these things. And yet at the end of the day, the United States was still a country
10:26that you would say was standing up for U.S.-led multilateral institutions, was standing up
10:33for a global free market with rule of law, was standing up for collective security, was
10:39standing up for democracy. Right. That is clearly not the case anymore. That is being
10:43decisively rejected by President Trump and his administration. And I think that that
10:50is going to drive enormous uncertainty in the world.
10:53I want to bring you back to that question of whether Trump and Musk continue to cohabit
10:57and work together. Will they have a likely blowout?
11:00I don't think that they're going to blow up. A couple of points here. First of all, Musk
11:06himself. People say, oh, he's on the spectrum. You can't contain him. You know, he says whatever
11:11he wants. And so he's going to upset Trump somehow. I don't see that at all. Elon Musk
11:16has never said a bad word about Xi Jinping. Not once. Right. And the Indians know this
11:22very well. He's very careful. Is it because suddenly his brain works when it comes to
11:27China and it doesn't? No, no. He knows exactly what he's doing. It is useful for him economically.
11:33Trump is more important for Elon Musk than Xi Jinping. Very clearly. Elon is now in the
11:39position to become the most important member, the most powerful member of the American military,
11:45industrial, technological complex, arguably the most powerful institutional space in
11:50the world. No one else is close. So Elon is going to be very careful not screw that up.
11:56Meanwhile, Trump has always been effective at managing people that are much more rich
12:02and powerful than he is. And Elon is particularly powerful in the ways that matter to Trump.
12:09It's not like he has a big army, but he has hundreds of millions of people that follow
12:13him. He makes headlines. Trump cares about that. He gave two hundred fifty million dollars
12:17to the Trump administration. Trump cares about that. He can use Elon as his bomb thrower
12:23in chief. And that basically is the role that he is playing. When you look at what Elon's
12:28been saying about the Germans, the French, the Canadians, the Brits, American allies,
12:34some of those tweets, Trump has been looking at Elon and his phone when Elon put them out.
12:40So it's not like Elon is doing it in secret and then Trump is getting angry. They're workshopping
12:45this. You think so? When Elon Musk pushes in favor of the German far right party or
12:51against the current government in the United Kingdom or about Canada, you know, making
12:56fun of the current prime minister. You think that's happening in cahoots with Donald Trump?
13:01I know for a fact that some of those posts were done when Trump was watching. So there
13:08was active discussion. I wouldn't say every single one, but I know that that's the case.