Happymon Jacob
In the past 25 years, India and the United States have become closer than ever before, building strong economic and strategic ties. Their partnership has rested on shared values and shared interests: they are the two largest democracies in the world, home to vast multicultural populations, and both have been concerned about the rise of India’s northern neighbor, China. But in the past four months, that carefully cultivated relationship has abruptly gone off the rails. The return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House threatens to undo the achievements of a quarter century.
Trump’s actions have disregarded several of India’s core foreign policy concerns, crossing sensitive redlines that previous U.S. administrations tended to respect. The United States once treated India as an important American partner in Asia. Today, India faces the highest current U.S. tariff rate, of 50 percent—an ostensible punishment for India’s purchase of Russian oil after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. India finds itself dealing with a higher tariff rate than even China, the country that, at least until recently, Washington wanted New Delhi to help contain. Indeed, Trump seems far more keen to strike a deal with China than to relent on his tough stance toward India. And to make matters worse, Trump announced a deal in late July with India’s frequent adversary Pakistan, under which the United States will work to develop Pakistan’s oil reserves.
These tariff woes follow on the heels of another shock to the Indian system: Trump’s intervention in May in a clash between India and Pakistan. After a few days of escalating strikes precipitated by a terrorist massacre in India, Trump unilaterally announced that he had brokered a cease-fire between the two countries. India vehemently denied that claim—New Delhi has long resisted any external mediation of its disputes with Islamabad, and American officials have been careful not to offend Indian sensitivities in this area—but Trump doubled down. No doubt he was offended by Indian pushback, just as he was pleased by Pakistan’s immediate embrace of his claims and its eventual nomination of him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
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