Book review: Manan Dwivedi, Trump’s America: Diplomacy and Economic Policies
| Author | Vivek Kumar Mishra |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019556120976586 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
616 Book Reviews
Manan Dwivedi, Trump’s America: Diplomacy and Economic Policies.
New Delhi: Ane Books Pvt Ltd., 2020, pp. 222, `843.00 (Hardcover).
ISBN-13: 978-9389212617.
DOI: 10.1177/0019556120976586
The book Trump’s America: Diplomacy and Economic Policies gives a vivid
picture of new developments under President Donald Trump in America. The
initial chapters provide an interesting glimpse of policies adopted by President
Trump. The first chapter of the book titled ‘The American Dream: Trump’s Way’
exalts an interesting discussion about the American Dream, part of the rise and
stealth of Donald Trump as a business tycoon, and much earlier than that as an
entrepreneur and an ‘America First’ oriented isolationist. The other chapters deal
with immigration policy and related legislation of the American system.
The author has well depicted and compared the thesis of Samuel P. Huntington
wherein hyphenated identities, such as Indian Americans, Chinese Americans
and Latin Americans, have caused a bit of obfuscation in the way the American
nationhood is objectified. He explains that identity-based issues and belief pat-
terns touch the larger immigration debate in the United States of America. He also
discusses through different examples about theories describing the Democrats
as more India-friendly, while the Republican regimes in Washington as poised
to be less New Delhi friendly. The Democrats and Republican candidates and
their agenda in the presidential election 2020 and issues related to the election
have been highlighted by the author. He has well-analysed the shift of policy by
President Trump, which does not follow the words of President Bush who used to
deftly utilise the idiom of ‘U are with us’ or ‘Against Us’ during the ‘war on terror’
(p. 40). President Trump has been termed as a man with ‘whims, idiosyncrasies,
and fallacies but never truly unpredictable for the American nation-state due to
various bold initiatives and reforms as called Trump Care in different arena—
domestic as well as global politics’.
The book is replete with engaging content on climate change policies, gun
laws and the interface between Church and religion, abortion and healthcare. It
has covered the financial reforms, shale oil, drilling in the Alaskan icy land along
with Trump policies towards South Asia, West Asia, Russia, China along with the
deliberations on the US–China trade wars.
The book also highlights Trump’s cultural diplomacy as a strategy for serving
the potential national interest of America. The cultural portrayals lead to the
reflection of the reality and the attendant myth about any nation-state particu-
larly and a region to be generally inclined. This aspect has been part of the larger
agenda of President Trump in both the domestic realm and the larger external
policy. President Trump is striving to weld together external and domestic policy
frameworks through the modicum of public and tweet diplomacy.
The author further highlights the innate gun culture in the United States. The
gun culture flooding the American market led to the avalanche of guns of all
genres in the hands of the American youth. The author contends,
The National Rie Association (NRA) is one of the most inuential interest groups in
US politics—not just because of the money it spends on lobbying politicians, but also
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