Shifting sands of power: The message from Trump’s big Gulf trip – and what that means for India

In February 2024, US President Donald Trump called it “one of the greatest trade routes in all of history”. In April, a US-Italy joint statement referred to it as “one of the greatest economic integration and connectivity projects of this century”. All of which made it even more striking that, over the course of a four-day visit to West Asia – with stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE – Trump appeared to make little mention of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.

The IMEC was announced in September 2023 with much fanfare by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G20 summit, with the aim of building a trade corridor that would rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

When conflict broke out in Gaza the following month, its implementation – heavily dependent on Saudi normalisation with Israel – appeared to be consigned to the backburner, although India, the UAE and several European nations continued to drum up support for the initiative, as we discussed here:

Moreover, IMEC appeared to be one of the rare multi-lateral initiatives that Trump – never a fan of group assignments, especially ones that include the European Union or those championed by his predecessor – was willing to embrace....

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