I’ve lost count of the times Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reassured farmers and dairies (latest yesterday) that their interests won’t be traded away. Say what you will about the politics, but on dairy the line is drawn in blood, not chalk. If US milk or cheese wants to enter India, the source cattle can’t have been fed meat, bone or blood meal, and animal rennet isn’t acceptable. That’s not a slogan, it’s the veterinary certificate, and it exists because for millions of Indians the vegetarian “green dot” is not a diet fad, it’s a covenant.
Now swing the camera across the ocean. In the US, the feed story has always been messier. The FDA’s BSE rules have, since 1997, prohibited most mammalian protein in ruminant feed, but with carve-outs that still allow certain animal-origin inputs like specific grades of tallow; and there’s a long paper trail and extensive literature around poultry litter being used in cattle rations. This may be acceptable in America; over here, it reads like a cultural non-starter, which is precisely why New Delhi insists on the “veg-feed” clause.
So let’s not pretend the current tariff drama is a noble (pun intended) push to open India’s dairy market or to punish Russian oil buyers proportionately. If that were true, the net would be wider and more even. China still lifts more Russian crude than anyone; Europe, even while cutting dependence, continues to take Russian LNG and other commodities; and US energy supply chains have kept touching Russian uranium in one way or another through 2024. Yet the blow landed on India, first an extra 25%, then another 25% from August 27, taking headline duties in some lines to 50%. That’s not energy policy; that’s selective targeting.
If you want to know why we’re “the chosen one,” go back to Operation Sindoor and the theatre around it. POTUS Donald Trump publicly declared he had brokered the ceasefire between India and Pakistan – for which he feels, he deserves a Nobel Prize; the Prime Minister said nothing; the MEA and Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar did the talking, cool as a ledger: “no third-party role.” But Trump didn’t want Jaishankar’s diplomatese. He wanted “his friend PM Moody” to stand up and validate the fantasy of being the peace-broker at a time when according to him five jets were downed (today they are seven, magically) or at least join in the playground talk, the way teenagers egg each other on so nobody looks uncool. For a man who metaphorically carries a Nobel acceptance speech in his pocket, silence from Modi came off as a slap. And Trump doesn’t forgive slaps; he escalates. The juvenile one-upmanship was apparent in his calling India a “dead economy.” That isn’t analysis, it’s name-calling, the kind of jab you hear when teenagers run out of real arguments.
We saw the same theatre in February, when he scolded Zelensky for being “thankless,” even drilling down to a jibe about not wearing a suit. It wasn’t policy, it was optics, the cafeteria performance again. If you don’t clap loudly enough, if you don’t dress the part, if you don’t parrot the line, you’re fair game for a public scolding. India’s silence was no different, except that instead of a press-room lecture, the stick landed as a 50% tariff wall. Pied Piper one day, schoolyard bully the next.
Who pays when a cafeteria grudge becomes trade policy? Start in Surat and Tiruppur. Diamonds and textiles industries employ millions. But order books for both textiles and jewellery are already wobbling. If the full 50% wall holds, this won’t be a Twitter tiff, it’ll be livelihoods.
And yes, the shock is spilling into the small and human stuff too. The US just yanked its de minimis exemption (that $800 duty-free door everyone used for small cross-border parcels). With almost no runway to rejig paperwork and duty collection, postal operators from Europe to Asia are pausing US-bound packets. India Post has suspended most US outbound booking for now. This isn’t Indian “retaliation”; it’s operational paralysis triggered by an American rule change with global spillovers. Modern tariffs don’t just hit containers; they trip over baby parcels and family gifts.
Before anyone says “we’ll be forced to open dairy to make up,” remember who we are in milk: a cooperative giant. Amul and its cousins aren’t marketing stories; they’re farmer income, cold chains and morning livelihoods with a national footprint. You don’t trade that away because one man didn’t get the applause line he rehearsed.
And while we’re in the agri aisle, a word on almonds, because tariff politics always circles back to someone’s grocery basket. India is the number-one export market for California almonds; in 2023/24 shipments crossed 400 million lbs. That’s the market reality. But supply chains and sentiment coexist, and policy should be honest about both. Do ask Nitin Puri of KisaanSay, who’s been busy pushing the Mamra, not only for its taste but for its high oil content as well. If “vocal for local” means anything, it means pushing our horticulture where it makes sense, and being clear-eyed about where we’ll keep importing because scale demands it. Am I making a case for 50% tariff on California almonds?
This is where the Prime Minister’s Swadeshi call actually meets the mandi. Put up your “vocal for local” boards, yes, but also fix procurement, finance and storage so that Himachal’s and Kashmir’s growers don’t fight climate and cashflow alone. We produce a sliver of the almonds we consume; don’t kid ourselves that Mamra will replace California tomorrow. But we can make sure “Mamra for dry California” is not just a WhatsApp boast; it’s a funded, agronomy-backed, climate-proofed plan for the hills, while we keep leveraging tariffs and standards to protect dairy’s cultural contract at home. That is swadeshi with a spine, not a hashtag.
What, then, should India do in the face of cafeteria diplomacy? Keep the dairy line where it is – because it is law, culture and market rolled into one. Use the WTO track even if “national security” is Washington’s fig leaf, because record matters. Cushion the shock where jobs are concentrated (diamonds, garments) with credit and buyer diversification. And lean into the PM’s own words on “vocal for local” by making them operational for horticulture and feed, less sermon, more subsidy where it moves the needle.
The third side of the coin – the thin edge that actually keeps the coin standing – is this: tariffs may be announced in capitals, but they land in kitchens and karkhanas. If this were about oil, policy would be even-handed. It isn’t. If it were about “opening Indian dairy,” Washington would be engaging our written certificates line-by-line. It isn’t. This is about a man who didn’t get his Nobel moment, didn’t get his Pied Piper parade, and decided to swing a bat at the lunch table. We don’t have to clap. But we do have to keep our farmers from getting hit by the flying trays.