India, Jan. 13 -- If the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the beginning of a new wave of globalisation, 2025 perhaps marked the end of that wave. After the end of the Cold War, American elites led the drive to "flatten" the world by removing restrictions on trade and capital flows. American multinational firms gained the most from globalisation. Other parts of the world, including China and India, also benefited. But globalisation did not benefit all sections of society equally. In the US, those who feel cheated by globalisation have now found a messiah in Donald Trump. The Trump administration has decided it need not engage with too many multilateral institutions. In its National Security Strategy (NSS) document released last month, the Trump administration argued that American policy elites had "placed hugely misguided and destructive bets on globalism and so-called free trade". The NSS advocates an explicitly "America First" approach to foreign policy. The Trump administration also released a policy document on World Trade Organization (WTO) "reforms" last month that threatens to upend the global trading system. As per existing WTO rules, developing countries such as India are allowed to levy higher tariffs (import taxes) than developed countries. The Trump administration wants to put an end to such special treatment. Trump's message to the world is loud and clear: Global rules and institutions matter only till they are in sync with his America First policy. Investors, businesses, and all other governments will need to adapt to this capricious form of globalisation now. How should India respond to this brave new world? First, we should avoid self-goals. Indian exporters are already reeling from Trump tariffs. They should not be penalised by their own government. Ad hoc increases in tariffs or ill-designed non-tariff barriers have often hurt Indian businesses more than foreign ones. The use of tariff walls to protect a domestic industry - such as steel - can erode the global competitiveness of another (such as automobiles, since cars produced with costlier steel must be sold at higher prices). Non-tariff barriers can have similar effects. The use of quality control orders to limit polyester imports seems to have inflated costs for apparel manufacturers (that use polyester as inputs), hurting their export prospects. Second, India needs to frame a coherent trade and investment strategy. This must be preceded by a national security strategy document that identifies industries critical to India's defence. Once supply lines to these industries are ring-fenced, trade and investment barriers in other industries should be lowered. As this column has argued earlier, the Union government should consult all stakeholders - including state governments and Opposition lawmakers - while framing a national consensus on India's trade strategy. The lack of a clear-cut trade strategy hurts India's small- and medium-scale exporters the most. Since these firms lack the intelligence-gathering and lobbying apparatus of large conglomerates, they are caught unawares by the shifts in trade policies, and end up losing business to rivals from other countries. Third, India should articulate its own vision of what a fairer and progressive global trading regime should look like. The trade economist Arvind Subramanian has argued that we are currently in a 'G-Negative-2' world, in which the two leading superpowers - US (overtly) and China (covertly) - have wreaked havoc on the global trading system. Middle powers such as India should use this moment to advocate a fairer form of globalisation. In the 1960s and 1970s, India's leadership of the non-aligned movement (NAM) and the G-77 helped it emerge as a leading voice on trade issues in the Global South. The world has changed a lot since then. Yet, there would still be room for fair-minded trade interventions in the post-Trump world. If India is to come up with WTO reform proposals that appeal to a wide section of the world, it must engage more closely with trade partners. Indian policy institutions and think-tanks need to build up a robust knowledge base of trade practices and problems globally. India can hope to become a vishwaguru (global leader) tomorrow only if it is prepared to be a sincere vishwa vidyarthi (global student) today. Finally, India should step up trade negotiations with a broad range of partners. An early trade deal with the European Union (EU) that protects our exporters from the debilitating impact of EU's proposed green tariffs (extra charges on polluting industries) is particularly important. Trade relations with the US may remain volatile even if an India-US trade deal materialises in the coming months, given the Trump administration's predilection to make U-turns. This column had advocated for normalisation of Sino-Indian trade ties at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. But given the geopolitical realities in our immediate neighbourhood, normalisation of ties with China has to be a slow and calibrated process. With the rest of the world, we can afford to be more open. Until India is able to reshape global trade rules, it would have to rely on smart bilateral deals to boost our trade prospects....