Congress Shift Challenges Trump's Tariff Power Over India

Democrats captured both chambers of the U.S. Congress in the midterm elections, and economist Jeffrey D. Sachs said the result ends President Donald Trump's tariff regime against India. The duties hit the people who paid their cost, Sachs said, even though Congress never voted for them. A changed Congress now puts a political check on the machinery of trade power.

Speaking to NDTV from Varanasi, Sachs called the election a fatal blow to Trump's agenda and said the Make America Great Again movement had suffered a definitive collapse. Democrats flipped Republican strongholds in Texas, Kansas and South Carolina as they won the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Who Has the Power

Sachs argued that Trump's unilateral trade duties lacked constitutional backing and that the U.S. Supreme Court had already thrown them out. He described the burden as taxation imposed without representation: "Trump doesn't have the authority; the American people absolutely have repudiated these tariffs. They paid for them. It is taxation without representation because Congress did not vote for this," he said.

That conflict sits at the center of Sachs's account of the tariff fight: an executive imposing trade costs without a congressional vote, while people pay the bill. The election changes who controls Congress, but the immediate remedies Sachs described still run through state institutions. He said a Democratic-controlled Congress could cut off budget appropriations for Trump's policies, and predicted that figures in Trump's inner circle would restrain him from ordering further military strikes.

Sachs said Trump will remain in office until January 20, 2029, but called him a lame duck and declared, "In American politics, this is the end of Trumpism. That's what's important." The vote shifts political leverage. It doesn't erase the executive apparatus or the bills people have already faced.

India's Leverage, and Its Limits

Sachs said the election gives India leverage in trade negotiations after months of turbulent bilateral ties, tariff threats and Middle East energy shocks during Trump's second term. He urged New Delhi to propose low, flat tariffs, telling it to put forward "an open trade proposition right now" and say, "No more fighting. Let's just get on with our business."

He warned Indian officials not to yield to pressure tactics from U.S. trade negotiators. "The incompetence is stunning," he said of Trump's economic team, describing them as lawyers who handle trade lawsuits and "don't understand anything about the economics of our world." He added that Trump's sudden penalties and sanctions were over. Those remain Sachs's predictions, not a new agreement reported by the article.

Sachs also cautioned India against strategic alliances with Washington, including the Quad grouping aimed at containing China. He said India should stand on its own in a multipolar world operating under the United Nations charter. "Don't trust this administration; don't trust the United States, for that matter. Don't become an ally of the United States," he said, arguing that Trump had no special relationship with India beyond his ties to "his bank account."

War, Bills and the MAGA Base

Sachs attributed the Republican defeat to Trump's broken promise to keep the United States out of foreign conflicts, rising living costs and voters' rejection of White-nationalist politics. He said households facing higher oil, gas and electricity prices linked their distress to U.S. military intervention against Tehran and U.S. complicity in Middle East conflicts driven by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sachs also noted that Netanyahu lost his parliamentary majority in Israel's Knesset elections.

Sachs called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to act through BRICS, which includes Iran, to halt the Middle East conflict. He said the conflict had strangled global commerce and threatened India's energy security, and argued that the group represents half the world's population and half the world's GDP. Unified diplomatic pressure, he said, could lower oil and gas prices and help end the conflict in Ukraine.

Sachs said MAGA's promise to avoid endless wars had been repudiated, turning its base against Trump. He also said the movement's anti-immigration pillar faltered as Hispanic voters left the Republican Party. "MAGA was largely a white base; it tried to talk the Hispanic vote into Trumpism, but the Hispanic vote departed from Trump," he said, pointing to what he called the most multi-ethnic Congress and governorships in U.S. history. The election rearranged the seats of power. The people who paid for the tariffs are still the people Sachs says paid for them.