Why wooing Ivanka Trump is high on Modi's agenda
US President Donald Trump is a family man at heart. He is proud of his kids and flaunts their achievements in public. It is also well known that his favourite child is daughter Ivanka. His children acknowledge that Ivanka is the apple of the president's eye.
Trump, as is well known, is susceptible to flattery. World leaders wanting to make a mark with the US president have quickly caught on that the best way to do that would be through his children, especially his elder daughter. The simple rule is the way to the president’s heart is through his daughter. So smart leaders like Narendra Modi and Angela Merkel are using her. The Chinese, on the other hand, are concentrating on granddaughter Arabella Kushner.
Germany’s astute Chancellor Angela Merkel set the ball rolling. She realised during her first visit to Washington in March, the importance of the first daughter in the new White House. Merkel and Trump did not take to each other in that meeting. Merkel was disappointed over Trump’s frequent threats of walking out of the Paris climate accord. He did so eventually. Hoping to repair ties, she quickly extended an invitation to Ivanka to attend the W20 summit in Berlin in April. This was gladly accepted as Ivanka is casting herself as the champion of working women. The W20 is part of the G20 engagements and precedes the main event. It promotes women’s economic empowerment believing that unless women fulfil their innate potential, development remains lopsided. The summit puts out a number of recommendations for the G20 to admit.
Merkel went out of her way to please Ivanka when she visited Berlin. According to reports from the W20, Merkel kept nodding, smiling and encouraging Ivanka when she took the mike. During the event she was on a panel alongside Merkel, IMF’s Christine Lagarde and queen Maxima of the Netherlands. Most Germans were not amused. The first daughter was jeered when she said that her father was a "champion of families".
Her decision to invite Ivanka came in for much criticism in the German media. “Am I the only one who thinks it is utterly absurd that the chancellor is now doing foreign policy with the daughter of Donald Trump?” opposition Social Democrat Lars Klingbeil tweeted on hearing the news.
While this was bad enough, what Donald Trump did during the July G20 summit in Hamburg was worse. He left a session on African migration attended by world leaders and asked his daughter to sit in for him.
Senior US officials were present, but he asked his daughter to hold the seat for him, something no other leader would think of doing.Trump was roundly criticised by the US media for this. But he defended himself and tweeted : “When I left the conference room for short meetings with Japan and other countries, I asked Ivanka to hold seat. Very standard. Angela M agrees!”
Not just the German chancellor is hoping to build cordial relations with Trump, but British Prime Minister Theresa May also said there was nothing wrong with this. May gets along with Trump and believes that with Britain’s exit from EU the "special relations between the UK and the US must be further strengthened".
In typical Trump style, after defending his decision to have his daughter sit in for him, he took a dig at the media. “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!”
Democratic Congress woman Maxine Waters sarcastically commented that Ivanka was at “a very important meeting that she knows nothing about".
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington in June, the Indian side was apprehensive considering Trump’s mercurial temperament. The MEA kept its expectations low, merely saying this was a get to know each other kind of meeting and nothing dramatic was expected. However, the two got along like a house on fire the bear hugs between them was evidence enough of the chemistry at work. Modi and his team decided to take a leaf out of the German chancellor’s book and invited Ivanka Trump for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Hyderabad. That was a smart move, and must have made her father very happy at the recognition of Ivanka’s talent by the Indian prime minister. India will lay out the red carpet for the first daughter and she is certain to return home with warm memories of the world’s largest democracy.
If India is wooing the daughter, rival China is concentrating on Ivanka Trump’s daughter Arabella. It began in February this year during Chinese new year celebrations in Washington. During the campaign, Trump had thrashed China, accusing it of currency manipulation and taking away US jobs. There was apprehension in China about Trump. Ivanka went to the mission with her daughter to listen to Chinese musicians and watch Chinese acrobats perform. She let it be known that her daughter was learning Mandarin and could also sing.
In April when Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife visited Trump in his Mar-a-Lago home, Trump’s grand daughter Arabella and her brother welcomed the couple with a Chinese song. The visitors were delighted.
During Trump’s recent trip to China, he carried with him a video of Arabella singing another song in Mandarin. The video of Arabella is said to have broken all records in China. Little Arabella is said to be a major hit in China and despite the concerns on both sides, the personal touch brought in by Ivanka’s daughter lightened the mood during the Trump-Xi meetings.
We have to wait and see how Ivanka's trip to Hyderabad next week pans out in the future.
Also read: If Trump is next US president, Ivanka will call the shots