Q: You once said while interviewing Donald Trump for your radio show that two-thirds or three-quarters of CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia and suggested that number, questionable as it is, somehow undermines American civic society. What exactly did you mean by that?

Q: You are also said to be a big fan of Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints, a patently anti-immigrant book that paints an ugly picture of Indians and Indian immigration.

Q: Did you also once compare Prime Minister Modi’s victory in 2014 to

Ronald Reagan

’s in 1984?

Q: How does legal immigration square with your idea of economic nationalism?

Q: It’s not very well known that Indians were big into manufacturing on the tech side.

Q: How did you come into this issue?

Q: You keep mentioning Hindu religious affiliation. Like the U.S., India is also a multicultural, multireligious country…

Q: But why identify them by religious affiliation?

Q: Isn’t automation as much, if nor more of a culprit as China or its stealing of manufacturing jobs?

Q: So all that talk of globalization and flat earth is not valid anymore?

Q: But India is aspiring to be another China, to step up its manufacturing….

Q: Wouldn’t you have similar view on India if it becomes a manufacturing powerhouse tomorrow? Even its modest service economy is attracting U.S wrath.

WASHINGTON: Why would a self-confessed economic nationalist patronize an ethnic immigrant group that he has in the past vilified and accused of usurping top technology jobs in Silicon Valley? Because he now recognizes that they do it legally, that they are Americans first, and they form the backbone of the U.S tech economy.This is the story of how Steve Bannon, who served as the Chief Strategist of the Trump White House before being knifed out over economic policies in the nationalists v globalists battle, became honorary chairman of the Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC), a Trump-supporting political outfit founded by Shalabh (“Shalli”) Kumar, a Chicago entrepreneur with an unabashedly Hindu orientation. Founder of the AVG Group of Companies, which once designed and manufactured electronic components, including printed circuit boards (pcb), the Ambala-born Kumar was a victim of a systematic Chinese takeover of the pcb industry starting in the year 2001 when China was admitted the World Trade Organisation.As it turned out, Kumar was not the only one. Although Indian-Americans are known mainly for their success in the service industry, it transpired that there were scores of Indian-American owned pcb manufacturing units across the U.S., particularly in and around Chicago. By Kumar’s account, they dominated a $ 70 billion industry before the Chinese invasion in the first decade of 2000. “It was a massacre,” he recalls. “The U.S lost about 3.54 million jobs in the sector including 50,000 in the Chicago area alone. The Chinese bought some $ 30 billion worth of our equipment for pennies to the dollar after undercutting and destroying us with systematic state-supported subsidies.”Rallying the routed Indian-American entrepreneurs (Kumar prefers to call them Hindu-Americans, a term Bannon also embraces comfortably), Kumar reached out to the Trump campaign (where Bannon was key figure espousing economic nationalism) impressed by the message of America First and the pledge to bring back manufacturing to the United States. “During the Trump election campaign, immigration was a big issue. We wanted to demonstrate that we are for legal, merit-based immigration. Shalli Kumar, who had a printed circuit board company, had difficulty connecting with Trump campaign and came to me. The GOP also had a difficult time reaching out to Hindu Americans. He made a presentation about the printed circuit board industry that had been decimated by the Chinese,” Bannon recalled in an interview.As it turned out, the mutual outreach occurred around the so-called Billy Bush weekend (when tapes of Donald Trump boasting about his sexual conquests in a radio interview to Billy Bush) surfaced. Traditional Republicans began abandoning the Trump campaign in droves. But Kumar did the opposite; he turned up with a $ 1 million contribution to the Trump campaign after raising money from his printed circuit board industry pals who had been pulversized by the Chinese.Of course, the pcb industry has not returned to the U.S yet and has not exactly been revived (and may never be). But Bannon says it is a work in progress and he is pressing for a more fundamental message: That the United States will fight for the return of the manufacturing industry and jobs that he says China has stolen through unfair trade practices. On June 22, Bannon was the headliner at a RHC-hosted Chicago event that incongruously melded two issues: discussing how to revive manufacturing in the U.S and celebrating Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s election victory in India (both Kumar and Bannon are Modi fans). He spoke to the Times of India on the sidelines of the conference.A: The point is we as a nation should be a meritocracy and open to limited legal immigration. Indian entrepreneurs have really been the backbone of what is driving the economy particularly on the tech side, so we should welcome their legal, merit-based immigration. But it’s also a fact that our engineering schools have a lack of Americans, particularly African-Americans and Hispanics, so we have to correct that in order to be able to compete.A: It is not about Indians or not about the issue of people coming to Europe. It is about the elites response to them. Our immigration system is broken; it fails legal immigrants. I’m anti-immigration as far as illegal immigration goes. Illegal immigrants are getting ahead of legal immigrants all the time.A: I started studying Modi in 2013. In fact, Modi and Abe foreshadowed Trump. As a nationalist, Modi was a Trump before Trump. He said I put India and India’s interest first and I admire that.A: Look, I’m a huge supporter of the Republican Hindu Coalition (Shalli Kumar, founder of RHC interjects: He has agreed to serve as honorary chairman of RHC) and what you are seeing here at this event to discuss manufacturing is a perfect example of what American could be. The printed circuit board industry was created by Hindu entrepreneurs who came here with nothing, who went to engineering schools here, and created a multi-billion dollar industry. They got eviscerated because of the policies of the U.S government and its elites.A: They were and they created a dominant industry that was worth some $ 70billion before the Chinese destroyed it. This printed circuit board industry was driven by Indian and Hindu entrepreneurs who came here legally. This is a reaffirmation of the potential of the country…A: During the Trump election campaign, immigration was a big issue. We wanted to demonstrate that we are for legal, merit-based immigration. Shalli Kumar, who had a printed circuit board company, had difficulty connecting with Trump campaign and came to me. The GOP also had a difficult time reaching out to Hindu Americans. He made a presentation about the printed circuit board industry that had been decimated by the Chinese. This happened around the Billy Bush weekend (when tapes of Donald Trump boasting about his sexual conquests) surfaced and traditional Republicans were bailing out on us. But Shalli and the RHC hung in with us. The President’s pivot to new immigration policies which is merit based is because of the Hindu immigrants and their support…A: I’ve no problem with multiculturalism if it leads to proper assimilation. The Hindu Americans have totally assimilated into the United States keeping intact all the great aspects of Indian culture and religion, very much like myself as Irish Catholic. We still do all the Irish things like step dancing although we are every assimilated as Americans. Anyway, the point is the Hindu American entrepreneurs did not have any clout. The Democratic Party hadn’t delivered for them and more importantly, the party of capitalism, the GOP, had looked the other way when the PC circuit board industry was destroyed by the Chinese. This is the backbone of Trump’s version of nationalism, right? Putting American interests first.A: The fact that they are Hindu Americans is not relevant. These guys are American manufacturing CEOs. Today, in the heartland of America, in Illinois, we had a tech industry that essentially got gutted because of policies of Wall Street and Capitol Hill. And it turns out this is the power of the story, a vast majority of entrepreneurs were all first generation Hindu Americans…it is pretty extraordinary. Not only did they lose revenue at the end of the day they were forced to sell their assets to the Chinese for pennies on the dollar.A: You just touched on what Gary Cohn and I fought about in the White House every day. That is the pitch the globalists made: That you can separate out manufacturing from r&d. It does not work. The idea that you can have Silicon Valley and Stanford and IIT in one place and manufacturing elsewhere simply does not work. You have to have the factory next to the r and d so that the theoretical engineers can go to the factory floor…everyone of these businessmen in the pcb industry was also a tinkerer. Not only do they have an EE (electronic engineering degree) but they also know how things come together. That is American innovation. That’s why its absolutely important to bring the manufacturing base here back to the United States and its gonna be a huge fight even with Wall Street and the GOP. It shouldn’t be lost on you that the same week we are doing this (meeting with the PCB manufacturers) 600 American CEOs are sending a letter to Trump saying you gotta stop the tariffs…we can’t have tariff on China because it is affecting us. There is a big rift in this country over the direction but the economic nationalists are very focused that if we are going to rebuild America into a manufacturing powerhouse then it has to come through measures like this with entrepreneurs like this.A: I never bought into (Tom) Friedman’s thesis. I was in Germany at Brandenburg gate to talk to privately held German companies that are being obliterated by China. They thought they were immune to it. They are not.A: India is not immune either. The evisceration of industrial democracies starts in India. You guys will bear the brunt of one-belt one-road, Made in China 2025 and the 5g rollout by Huawei. That is the CCP (China’s Communist Party) masterplan for global economic hegemony to make China the high end manufacturing center. One belt one road is meant to get natural resources, components, parts… and open up markets. Everything of high value added manufacturing goes to China. It will have a dramatic negative impact on future economic growth of India just like it has led to the deindustrialization of US and Western Europe. We have to get a more robust strategic partnership with India.A: In a level playing field, if countries rise we have no problem with that. What we have in China is a radical cadre of the CCP that is using state subsidies to destroy existing and nascent industries in countries including India. The rise of India is going to be a net positive to the world. First and foremost, as messy as it is, it is easier to sort out issues between democracies. We have disputes with India….on H1b, on data sharing etc. As partners we have disagreements with Japan, Mexico, and Europe. But we work through them.