What a Trump Election Victory Would Mean for Bangladesh

Donald Trump’s recent social media broadside against Bangladesh, which spoke of “barbaric violence” against Hindus and other religious minorities and claimed the country is “in a total state of chaos,” should be viewed against the backdrop of US electoral politics. Pro-Trump Hindu-American activists have said that Trump’s comments, posted just five days before America’s presidential election, were influenced by their advocacy.

Still, one shouldn’t overlook the potential policy implications of Trump’s comments, which surely weren’t received well by the interim government in Dhaka. Accordingly, if Trump wins the election, US-Bangladesh relations will get off to a shaky start. However, there are other reasons to believe a Trump triumph could pose new challenges for a recently revitalised bilateral partnership—reasons that go well beyond anything Trump might post online.

US-Bangladesh relations experienced a reset this year. It began after Bangladesh’s election, when US President Joe Biden sent Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a warmly worded letter expressing “my sincere desire” to co-operate in a wide variety of spheres, after many months of bilateral tensions in the lead up to an election that the State Department would categorise as not free or fair. But the reset truly took off after the mass movement against Hasina this summer that brought Muhammad Yunus to power. The State Department quickly issued a statement saying it “stands ready to work” with Bangladesh’s interim government. Yunus, like the US government, had been critical of Hasina’s illiberal and antidemocratic policies. He has many friends within the power corridors of Washington.

But whereas the Yunus factor is an asset for US-Bangladesh relations today, it could become a liability if Trump returns to the presidency. Yunus criticised Trump’s 2016 election win, describing it as a “solar eclipse…which must not destroy us and suck our spirit.” He said the election “became the victim of the wrong type of politics” and “now that you are president you have to look at the world in [a] more generous way so that you can build bridges,” not walls. Yunus’s liberal politics, which have helped earn him the support of many top US Democrats, including Bill and Hilary Clinton, puts him at odds with Trump as well. They are far from ideological bedfellows.

Additionally, the core focus of US-Bangladesh relations today likely wouldn’t appeal to a second Trump administration. Since Bangladesh’s interim government took office, the Biden administration has prioritised helping stabilise and rebuild post-Hasina Bangladesh. US officials have pledged new development and humanitarian aid, and offered technical assistance to help Dhaka implement far-ranging reforms. However, for Trump, foreign relations are largely transactional. A harsh critic of nation-building and a strong proponent of more robust financial burden-sharing among allies and partners, Trump wouldn’t be enthused about framing a US relationship with another country (and especially a non-treaty ally) around various forms of US aid.

Instead, a second Trump administration would likely want to focus bilateral ties around the same two issues—great power competition and trade—that drove the relationship when Trump was president the first time. Back then, those issues helped boost ties. But replicating those successes could prove more difficult in a second Trump administration.

It was during the Trump presidency when the US Indo Pacific strategy, which aims to counter Chinese power, emerged as the core US policy approach to Asia. At that time, US strategy documents on the Indo Pacific policy highlighted growing US-Bangladesh co-operation in areas ranging from maritime security and counterpiracy to counterterrorism and military education and training. 

However, with Yunus now in power, Dhaka will be inclined to ramp up ties with Beijing. To be sure, Hasina did so as well. But Yunus may be inclined to go further than Hasina did—because he doesn’t have the deep partnership with India that Hasina did, and therefore won’t let New Delhi’s views influence how he steers relations with Beijing. If Trump returns to the presidency and, as is likely, takes a maximalist position on countering China, a more unencumbered Bangladesh-China relationship wouldn’t be a good thing for US-Bangladesh ties. 

Meanwhile, during Trump’s presidency, according to the US Census Bureau, bilateral trade took off in a big way, with exponential increases in the annual volume of trade in goods over the first three years of his administration. During that period, the US was one of the top sources of foreign direct investment in Bangladesh, and American companies were among the largest foreign investors there. 

But Bangladesh’s economy has sputtered in recent years—and this has problematic implications for future US-Bangladesh commercial relations, if the economy continues to struggle. Both US-Bangladesh bilateral trade volume and US FDI flows declined between 2022 and 2023.

Certainly, these recent geopolitical and economic developments could pose challenges for bilateral relations in a potential Kamala Harris administration as well; a Harris White House would also prioritise considerations of great power competition and trade. However, they would have less problematic implications for the relationship under a President Harris than they would under a President Trump—and that is because a Harris administration, unlike a Trump one, would likely maintain the current priority focus on assistance and stabilisation. Co-operation on this front would help blunt the effects of any negative impacts on relations stemming from geopolitical or economic matters. 

This isn’t to suggest bilateral relations would be doomed under a second Trump administration. For one thing, Yunus presumably won’t stay in power for an extended period. And so long as he is in power, even if he is not an admirer of President Trump, he will want to ensure partnership with the US—especially given its importance as a donor. And that could mean making some concessions to Washington—including asserting that pursuing closer ties with Beijing won’t change Dhaka’s longstanding policy of balancing ties with Beijing and Washington, as reflected most recently in the Indo Pacific Outlook announced by the Hasina government in 2023. 

Bangladesh’s leadership could also make a pitch to a Trump administration that Bangladesh will be a more effective strategic and trade partner if its economy and institutions are more stable—and that US assistance can help move the needle forward on that front. Additionally, Bangladesh could partner with the US Development Finance Corporation (assuming the DFC is eventually reauthorised by the US Congress), a key investment mechanism tied to the US Indo Pacific strategy. This would help advance both commercial and strategic co-operation. But there is a catch: Bangladesh first needs to strengthen labour rights. DFC won’t invest there until these improve.

Ultimately, there is much at stake for Bangladesh with the US election. US policy across most of South Asia largely reflects a bipartisan consensus. The two major parties generally take the same approach: Each wishes to pursue strategic partnership with India, maintain workable relations with Pakistan, limit ties with Taliban-led Afghanistan, and more broadly aim to counter China in the region. In effect, US policy in South Asia will remain relatively unchanged, no matter who wins the election. But Bangladesh is an outlier: It is one of the few countries in the region that could see its relationship with the US significantly—and possibly deleteriously—impacted by the election outcome.●

Michael Kugelman is the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center.