Trump pledges to be President for all

Skipping policy issues in his victory speech, the 70-yearold President-elect congratulated his Democrat rival Hillary Clinton with whom he had crossed words during the long, often ugly campaign, saying she fought very hard. 

“Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump told his supporters at the campaign headquarters amid cheers and shouting. Flanked by his wife Melania, children and running mate Mike Pence, he said he mean that very sincerely. “Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division, have to get together, to all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation I say it is time for us to come together as one united people,” he said. 

“It is time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans, and this is so important to me,” Trump asserted. “For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country,” Trump said during his speech. “As I’ve said from the beginning, ours was not a campaign but rather an incredible and great movement, made up of millions of hard-working men and women who love their country and want a better, brighter future for themselves and for their family,” he added. Trump pledged to “deal fairly with everyone,” including “all other nations.” “We will get along with all other nations willing to get along with us. We will have great relationships,” he added.

The results are in. The polls are closed. American voters have voted, and the American people have spoken. With these votes and with this voice, Americans have elected Donald Trump to be the 45th President of the United States.  We are here today, not to celebrate an individual winner, or to side with a particular candidate, but to celebrate the American democratic election process as a whole, to witness that process in action. While there were certainly many firsts in this very eventful and hardfought election campaign, the end result is the same as it has been before: Free and fair elections followed by acceptance and respect for the results. Whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, Red or Blue on the political map, this is something fundamental to our values and to our core as Americans. And it’s something, I’m sure, that can be appreciated by all of us here – from both the oldest democracy in the world, and the largest democracy in the world. The ties that bind our two countries together are built on our shared democratic values, and go beyond the friendship of the American President and the Indian Prime Minister. They go beyond the economic and people-to-people ties. The US-India relationship is vitally important, it is bipartisan, and it is only growing stronger. Here’s to another four years of robust US-India dosti. 

My mentor, Bob Shultz, wrote to me on Tuesday stating, “I don’t think the polls accurately capture the populist sentiment in the country.  I think there is a great fear of change…we have a man acting like a lightning rod for the sentiments.” This was a brilliant reading of what happened in the US elections. The markets in the US have discounted a Hillary win but will take a further tumble given Trump’s victory. However, I do believe that a Trump victory is good for the US and India in the long run. At the end of the day, Trump is a businessman and deal making is in his blood. Who else is better to strike a deal with than our own PM, Narendra Modi? The world sees Modi as a pro-business leader and so, I believe both Trump and Modi will hit it off well. Short term impacts for India – Oil prices will go up, though it will increase inflation, it will do good for Indian exports of infrastructure services as the Middle East will have more money to spend, pharma companies will do well as Obama Care goes out of the window, IT Services will get hit temporarily as Trump will make noise on shoring jobs. The Indian rupee will stabilise after a small fall. Indian markets will go up as foreign institutional investor investments will happen. Long term impacts for India – Trump will be a friend of India. I see that the IT sector will do well in the long run because businesses in the US have a skill shortage and that can only be imported from countries like India. This will happen.  Oil prices will continue to be a worry but with the world moving away to more sustainable forms of energy, we will see the impacts being lower and lower. 

Every four years, we Americans head to the polls to vote for our next President. Watching the results come in is always exciting. I fondly remember casting my vote in my first Presidential election in 1980 and watching the results come in with my friends in my college dormitory. Since then I have shared the excitement of election night with colleagues and contacts in different posts around the world where I have served during the 29 years as a foreign service officer in the department of state. This year has been exciting as well. America is the world’s oldest democracy and India is the largest. For me, watching the process unfold alongside the people in Chennai has been especially rewarding. Free and fair elections are the cornerstones of our democratic governments. Regardless of which candidate wins, our countries will unite around them because that’s what democracy is all about. The ties that bind our two countries together are built on our shared values.