Vadluru:

Far from Republican festivities as Donald Trump claimed US election victory, residents of a sleepy Indian village celebrated that their descendant would be the next “Second Lady”, hoping to benefit from her success.

Academic highflyer and successful lawyer Usha Vance, the child of Indian immigrants, is the wife of Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance.

While 38-year-old Usha Vance was born and brought up in suburban San Diego, those in the village of her paternal ancestors in India’s southern Andhra Pradesh state prayed that historic ties would bring improvements to their land.

“We feel happy,” said Srinivasa Raju, 53, a resident of Vadluru, a village of white-washed homes scattered amongst palm trees, more than 13,450 (8,360 miles) from the White House in Washington. “We support Trump.”

Villagers had offered prayers for a Trump win, and Hindu priest Appaji said he hoped Usha Vance would do something in return.

“We expect her to help our village,” the 43-year-old priest said, dressed in flowing saffron robes, after lighting a candle at the idol of Hindu elephant-headed deity Ganesh for Trump.

“If she can recognise her roots and do something good for this village, then that would be great.”

‘Very fine’

Usha Vance’s great-grandfather moved out of Vadluru and her father Chilukuri Radhakrishnan — a PhD holder — was brought up in the Indian city of Chennai, before going on to study in the United States.

“Every Indian — not just myself, every Indian — we feel proud of Usha, because she is of Indian origin,” said 70-year-old Venkata Ramanayy. “We hope she will develop our village.”

She has never visited the village, but the priest said her father came around three years ago and checked on the temple’s condition.

“We have already seen the governance of Trump — very good,” Ramanayy said. “Indian and American relations were very fine during the presidency of Trump.”

Little is known about Radhakrishnan’s initial years in the United States, but the film of J.D. Vance’s memoirs, Hillbilly Elegy, refers to him coming to the country with “nothing”.

Millions of Indians have made similar journeys as the Chilukuris, and according to the most recent US census, Indians have become the country’s second-largest Asian ethnicity, growing 50 percent to 4.8 million in the decade to 2020.

Usha, a practising Hindu who studied at Yale and Cambridge Universities, married J.D. Vance in Kentucky in 2014. They have three children.

‘Inspiring’

But the story was different around 730 kilometres (454 miles) to the southwest, in Thulasendrapuram, once home to Kamala Harris’s grandfather.

T.S. Anbarasu, 63, said the Democrat’s “struggle” had encouraged girls to stay in school.

“She is inspiring this village,” he said. “Any school in the surrounding area, students know about Kamala Harris.”

Harris, 60, was born in California, but was often taken to India by her mother.

“If she comes here, we’ll treat her like the president of the United States,” Anbarasu said.

“We are still proud of her. She is like family to us. If our family members fail, we don’t discriminate against them, or treat them as a loser, right?”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Beijing:

Donald Trump on Wednesday won the US presidential election over Kamala Harris, and world leaders were swift in congratulating the Republican.

Donald Trump vowed strict trade measures against China on the campaign trail for the White House, and the relationship between Washington and Beijing will be one of the key themes of his tenure.

Here is a selection of comments made by Trump about China:

— “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive,” Trump tweeted in November 2012.

— “I beat the people from China. I win against China. You can win against China if you’re smart. But our people don’t have a clue. We give state dinners to the heads of China. I said, ‘why are you doing state dinners for them? They’re ripping us left and right. Just take them to McDonald’s and go back to the negotiating table,” Trump said at a July 2015 rally.

— “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country, and that’s what we’re doing,” Trump told a campaign rally in May 2016, insisting that the United States had “a lot of power with China.”

— “China is letting us down in that they have not been buying the agricultural products from our great Farmers that they said they would,” Trump tweeted in July 2019.

— “For the people that are now out of work because of the important and necessary containment policies, for instance the shutting down of hotels, bars and restaurants, money will soon be coming to you. The onslaught of the Chinese Virus is not your fault! Will be stronger than ever!” he wrote in a tweet in March 2020.

— “China’s pattern of misconduct is well known. For decades, they have ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year were lost dealing with China, especially over the years during the prior administration,” he said in May 2020.

— “As we pursue this bright future, we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China,” Trump told the United Nations in September 2020, referring to the coronavirus pandemic.

— “Think of President Xi: central casting, a brilliant guy. You know, when I say he’s brilliant, everyone says, ‘Oh that’s terrible’… Well, he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. Smart, brilliant, everything perfect. There’s nobody in Hollywood like this guy,” he said in July 2023 at a Fox News town hall.

— “I had a very strong relationship with him,” Trump said of President Xi to the Wall Street Journal in October 2024. “He was actually a really good, I don’t want to say friend — I don’t want to act foolish, ‘he was my friend’ — but I got along with him great.”

Trump added: “He’s a very fierce person.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)