The complaint of Donald Trump is that most nations in the world sell their goods cheap in America, but they never let America sell enough or sell at a good price. He believes this imbalance is a form of stealing, “a rip-off” conducted by all major nations, including India. But the thing is, it does not feel that way. As I try to write this paragraph, I have to constantly fight what America owns: distraction. Imagine one nation controlling the power to distract the world. There is ChatGPT, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Gmail, WhatsApp, Kindle, Netflix and The New York Times, which occasionally laments a distracted world. I have knocked out most of them from my American phone, but still.

Previously, my work was more interesting than the distraction because the distraction was just a doorbell or something of that quality. Today the distraction is probably more interesting than what I am trying to create. Also, what I create itself might be a part of the future distraction in an American medium. This is not the only reason why it does not “feel” as though the world doesn’t buy enough of America. In fact, it is a very small part.

There is a huge cultural and emotional imbalance between America and the rest of the world, especially India, considering our size. We are very interested in America, but America has no interest in us. We are influenced by America but cannot influence America. So I wonder, considering the massive cultural deficit, which surely has benefited America in material ways though that cannot be shown on paper, is there a cultural tariff that India can impose? An abstract, esoteric tariff to compensate? I don’t like the idea because who wants more restrictions on culture in the name of a tariff on culture. But I’m just wondering if such a cultural tariff is even possible. Actually, there might be such a tariff already. It is just that we don’t immediately perceive it.

First let us understand the cultural deficit India maintains with America. It is all around us. Acclaim in tech, science and the arts has to come from America for it to have any value. The Oscars, for instance, are bigger than any Indian film award. There is no Indian acclaim an American would rate higher than what his nation distributes. A poorly dubbed third-rate Marvel film can gross more in India than any mainstream Indian film. American heft not only hypes its artists, but also relegates Indians of similar talent to the shadows in their own nation.

Bitcoin succeeded only because we instinctively knew, though with no evidence, that it was American. The notoriety of the crypto was the intent of its mysterious creator or creators, only known as ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’, that a government should not control currency. Yet, its intellectual heft and commercial prospect came from our conviction that it was an American invention. We felt that way unconsciously because we have so often surrendered to American hype. When we encountered something that had a similar force, we just thought it had to come from America. Certainly three underground Nigerians, say, could not have created the idea of crypto. Thus even a suspicion of an American rebellion against America can influence the world.

After Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood lampooned Bruce Lee, China denounced the film. That was funny because China had never shown so much love for an American – Bruce Lee, who was born in America and was a citizen of British Hong Kong. American culture could pass off a highly Westernized Bruce Lee as Chinese to the whole world, including China.

Even the popularity of yoga is a gift of the cultural deficit. India had forgotten yoga, as B. K. S. Iyengar pointed out in his book, Light on Life. But when he taught it to the West, and Americans in particular took to it, yoga returned to India. So, America can sell our own stuff back to us.

Maybe America has a cultural surplus with the rest of the world not because of its economic heft but because America is innately interesting. Maybe America got something about human nature that no other civilization did. Maybe what humanity was waiting for was America – those half buns with cheese, trashy movies, music of the slaves re-mastered by the new people, and the idea that greed is good but also that greed is bad.

Let’s not forget that while countries might appear to be moving away from “Western ideology”, what every country wants other countries to be is more like the West. Many nations have tried to imitate America, misled by the nonsensical idea of “soft power”. Soft power means sending some arse-licking artists to dance or sing in a foreign land. That really does nothing for the sponsoring nation. Also, someone eating egg-fried rice in New York doesn’t do anything for China. And someone in San Francisco watching melodramatic Korean serials does not improve South Korea’s “image”. The success of curry or an Egyptian taxi driver singing Hindi songs means nothing for India. These are trivial amusements. True soft power is a cultural surplus. You need to be white to achieve that.

In response, India does levy a cultural tariff. Naturally it is unconscious, for it would be too funny, even by Indian standards, for an official “cultural tariff” against America. The cultural tariff is in the form of an excessive love of a population for its own culture, led by its provincial elite who feel slighted by Western culture. Many nations have demonstrated this resistance. I feel that America is responsible for two strands of nationalism in developing nations. One occurred when the rich of poor nations migrated, felt slighted by the local elite, and began to love “home” the way they had never loved before. The second is the ongoing cultural tariff, which results in some goons in Bangalore or Mumbai breaking English signposts.

(My latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us’.)