Long before Trump Towers stretched themselves skyward, and in the days when an apprentice was just a greenhorn on the shop-floor not a participant in a TV competition, the Harley Davidson motorcycle had assumed an iconic status. Even in India, though the numbers were decidedly fewer than those of the British-manufactured BSA, Ariel, Norton, Royal Enfield, Matchless and AJS bikes.

Delhi did a have fair share of them in the 1950-70s ~ it was around discarded World War II models that were built the four-seater rickshaws, now relegated to the memory as the phat phat seva. Yet, sentiment apart, it is not easy to understand why the US President chose to build his criticism of Indian import regulations around that particular motorcycle brand.

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For starters, Donald Trump’s figures have been questioned, there are different tariff structures for bikes of different sizes: so his seeking to mock Narendra Modi (even if that thrills the Prime Minister’s legion of domestic critics) was more than a trifle off target.

It remains to be seen if businessman-Trump’s politicised sales pitch will set the cash-registers ringing: Harley Davidson models range from a little over Rs 5 lakh to all of Rs 60 lakh, and the price factor alone suffices to restrict its sales to the truly affluent who ride motorcycles for the singular joy they generate, rather than put them to daily use ~ as is the norm with most owners of two-wheelers.

Those who spend for speed would more likely opt for sports cars. The short point being that the President’s advisers in the White House (how seriously is their counsel taken in the Oval Office?) could surely have come up with a better example around which to build their case. There are other American products which Indians might wish to lay their hands on ~ the problem is that so few American brands are still manufactured within that country, and competitiveness knows no “national barriers”.

It was business unsustainability that caused General Motors to quit producing for the Indian market. Still, it is not impossible to know where Mr Trump was coming from. True few have seen pictures of him with flowing hair, wearing the “leathers” of big-bikers, but his standard cars would probably be limited to Cadillac and Lincoln models, exclusive golf-clubs, Lear jets and, of course, Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Some of Mr Modi’s critics also accuse him of favouring big business while projecting a chaiwallah image: they cite the Ambanis and Adanis as fellow travellers, but not ~ at least as far as most of us know~ as Easy Riders on powerful motorcycles. High-speed as projected by Mr Modi takes the shape of an Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train. The jury is hung over whether the producers of the Harley-Davidson motor-cycle relish or have reservations over Mr Trump opting to play as their pinch-hitter. He ain’t no Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio.