Phillips P. OBrien
Well that did not take long. It has only been a five days since the US got all tough on India and tried to humiliate the Indians into bowing to US greatness. Then, the Trump Administration imposed what were clearly punitive tariffs on India, expecting, it seems, the Indians to come grovelling to Trump and ask what they needed to do to make things better.
And guess what? It is already the US which is grovelling as the Indians treat the move by the Trump Administration with the disdain that it deserves. Let me screenshot two things for you. This happened yesterday:
Indian Prime Minister Modi with Chinese President XI and Vladimir Putin, sharing a laugh (probably at the USA) in Beijing on August 31, 2025.
And this “I’m so sorry” tweet was just sent out a few minutes ago by the US State Department.
The US decision to decimate the US-Indian relationship never made sense in any rational universe where states act with their self-interest at heart. I sent this piece out about this act of geopolitical self-harm three weeks ago.
What the Trump Administration was doing in singling out India for punitive tariffs was not just self-destructive, it was also profoundly illogical. The publicly stated idea that the move was because India was buying lots of Russian oil was, ipso facto, ridiculous. China buys even more Russian oil than India and Turkey buys almost as much—and Trump is desperately trying to keep both of these states onboard. And, as I warned in that piece, the move would more than likely help Putin by pushing India closer to Russia and China—which is exactly what happened.
So, if the move had nothing to do with helping Ukraine, it might be asked why it happened? Well, what has emerged in the last few days is that the reason for the blow-up was even more venal than most people could have predicted.
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