Last week, US President Donald Trump imposed a sharp 25 per cent tariff on India and an unspecified penalty for buying Russian oil and arms, sending financial markets in the country on a downward spiral. Adding insult to injury, a day after this announcement, he went on to remark that he doesn’t care if India’s “dead economy” implodes any further. To be sure, Trump’s ruthless treatment of India has left New Delhi scurrying. For, it was only in February that he saw India as a major strategic partner and after a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the White House both agreed to boost bilateral trade, currently worth $129 billion, to $500 billion by 2030. Interestingly, India was one of the few countries that did not feel too concerned about Trump’s second term in the White House. The first Trump administration had gone pretty smooth for India, and New Delhi was looking forward to a Trump 2.0 that it thought would be just as manageable. However, for India, things do not seem to unfold on expected lines.
Three factors appear to be behind Trump’s changed and hardened stance on India. Firstly, New Delhi continues to import oil and military equipment from Russia, much to the chagrin of the US-led Western order. The West sees this as akin to financing Russia’s war efforts against Ukraine as it kind of nullifies the sanctions that Europe and the US have imposed on Moscow. Trump, it seems, has made New Delhi’s arms and oil imports from Russia a key component of his India policy, especially after he got his nose burnt by Putin who has not heeded him on the ceasefire issue. As tensions rise between the US-led West and Russia, Trump appears to be sending warning signals that India will have to face consequences if it does not align with the West.
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India has significantly increased its purchases of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia accounts for over a third of India’s oil imports, a huge jump from less than one per cent before the conflict. In the early days of the Ukraine war, New Delhi faced a lot of pressure to reduce its economic ties with Russia. That pressure continued as Indian oil imports soared. However, by the second year of the war, the conversation around India’s imports started to change mainly propagated by local media. It was projected like India had managed to convince the US and Europe that buying more affordable Russian oil—thanks to a price cap set by the European Union and G7—was actually helpful in keeping global oil prices stable. Now that Trump is unable to bring a ceasefire in Ukraine as he had promised during his election campaign, something he had said he could do in “one day,” his disappointment has increased over India’s continued oil and arms imports from Russia.
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Secondly, despite several rounds of talks since the February meeting between Trump and Modi, a consensus is yet to be reached for a bilateral trade deal between India and the US. The US wants India to open up its politically sensitive agriculture and dairy sectors to American imports, and it is also looking for more relaxed rules on data storage and digital trade, which are still points of contention. Unfortunately for India of today, it does not possess experts in updated global affairs who can help it formulate foreign policies based on current geopolitical situations, just as it does not have economists with proven track records of implementable ideas who could guide in creating national economic policies and in international manoeuvrings in situations as the country is in today. India’s foreign and economic policies and responses are all bureaucrat driven, thereby resulting in failures on all fronts at the same time.
The last and most important reason could be India’s refusal to acknowledge Trump’s contribution in the ceasefire after four days of a mid-level military confrontation with Pakistan following the Pahalgam massacre. Since the ceasefire, Trump has been all praise for Pakistan and its leadership, much to New Delhi’s chagrin. Apart from that Trump has, at least two dozen times on record, claimed that it was he who brought the truce between India and Pakistan and deserves a Nobel Peace prize for this achievement. Indian political authorities, however, have steadfastly denied this credit to him and most probably that has upset him.
The India-US strategic relationship has been cultivated over the last 25 years, thanks to the efforts of leaders from both countries, including Trump during his first term. In recent years, India and the US have proudly called themselves “engaged democracies,” moving away from the “estranged democracies” label of the Cold War era when they were on opposite sides. Since 2000, the bond between India and the US has been getting stronger, peaking with the signing, during UPA-I administration, of the 2008 India-US civil nuclear deal. With growing strategic trust, India has also been purchasing defence equipment from America.
Now, an unpredictable and transactional Trump has put India on the back foot. And, primarily due to its clueless foreign policy, India does not seem to have too many options open for it except floundering ahead in an already dire situation.
