President Trump’s decision to slap secondary sanctions on India over its imports of Russian oil, while also unleashing a tariff barrage on Indian exports, is more than a trade dispute. It is a self-inflicted wound to America’s most vital strategic partnership in Asia, and it comes at a time when China is flexing its military muscle throughout the region.
Washington has long courted India as a bulwark against an expansionist China and as a critical pillar of its “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy. Yet Trump’s punitive steps against India are eroding the very trust on which strategic alignment rests — to Beijing’s delight.
The mutual trust painstakingly built over years underpins bilateral cooperation. Once lost, it will be hard to rebuild. Even if the administration eventually reaches a trade deal with India, it may not be able to repair the damage.
Targeting India over Russian oil purchases smacks of selective enforcement. The European Union’s large imports of Russian energy products, especially liquefied natural gas, have been left untouched. Such European imports not only contribute more to Russia’s coffers than India’s purchases, but Europe spends more on Russian energy than on assisting Ukraine.
Trump has also spared the world’s largest buyer of Russian oil and gas: China. But India, the very country Washington has spent years courting as an Asian counterweight, has become the first victim of his secondary sanctions. This suggests Trump’s tactics are less about punishing Moscow than about pressuring New Delhi.
Russian oil is a pretext to strong-arm India into accepting a Trump-dictated trade agreement, much as he foisted a largely one-sided deal on the European Union. That his tariffs on India have little to do with Russian oil is evident from one telling fact: Indian exports to the U.S. of refined fuels such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — increasingly made from Russian crude — remain exempt from his tariffs.
Such is the Trumpian logic. He has hit Indian non-energy exports with steep tariffs, but spared booming exports of refined fuels made largely from Russian crude. Trump seems to have no problem with Russian oil — as long as it is refined in India and then pumped into American planes, trucks and cars.
Furthermore, given continued U.S. imports of Russian enriched uranium, fertilizers and chemicals, Trump does not seem troubled that his own administration is helping fund Russia’s war in Ukraine while still locked in a proxy war with Moscow.
In truth, Trump is using New Delhi’s Russian oil purchases as a crude bargaining tactic to secure a bilateral trade deal on his terms. India illustrates how the Trump administration has weaponized tariffs not merely to extract trade concessions but also to bind other countries more closely to American strategic and security interests. In seeking to bend India to its will, it has targeted that country’s traditionally independent approach to global affairs, including neutrality on conflicts.
Indian exports to the U.S. now face a steep 50 percent tariff, signaling the end of Trump’s bromance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His moves against strategic-partner India are harsher than against China. This marks a dramatic U-turn from his first term, when bilateral relations thrived to the extent that Trump declared at a huge February 2020 rally in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, “America loves India, America respects India, and America will always be faithful and loyal friends to the Indian people.”
In Trump’s second term, Modi was among the first world leaders to visit the White House, agreeing to fast-track trade negotiations. In July, the Indians believed they had reached an interim deal, awaiting only Trump’s approval. But in characteristic fashion, Trump abruptly rejected the accord and embarked on punishing India.
New Delhi has publicly criticized the Trump administration’s double standards. But it is more concerned about a deeper question: If Washington can so easily turn its coercive tools on a supposed ally, what is to stop it from doing so again?
U.S.-India relations have probably plunged to their lowest point in the 21st century, thanks to Trump’s economic war and his singling out of India for secondary sanctions.
The fallout will extend beyond lost trade. India could respond by doubling down on strategic autonomy — hedging between the U.S., Russia and others — and diversifying its economic and security partnerships. Trump’s gamble may wring out trade concessions in the short term, but it risks undermining the security architecture in the Indo-Pacific, where unity among key democracies is the only real check on China’s expansionism. America is effectively handing China an opening to court a disillusioned India.
New Delhi is already signaling that it has other geopolitical options. Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to visit India in the coming weeks. In less than three weeks, Modi is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, which Putin will also attend. Moscow is pushing for a revived Russia-India-China grouping.
A stable Indo-Pacific order demands more than joint military exercises and communiqués; it requires political will to accommodate each other’s core interests. Punishing India in ways that ignore its legitimate security and energy needs sends the opposite message.
Ironically, Trump’s sanctions-and-tariffs blitz may have done India a favor by exposing the strategic reality of America’s unreliability. By presenting the U.S. as a transactional power, Trump has signaled that Washington cannot be counted on to separate short-term commercial considerations from long-term strategic imperatives.
Trump’s economic coercion risks alienating a vast, still-growing market that U.S. firms see as central to their future growth. India remains the world’s fastest-growing major economy, and as many other economies stagnate and populations shrink, it stands out as a rising giant.
Sacrificing a linchpin of Indo-Pacific stability for a fleeting win in a tariff war is not tough bargaining. It is strategic recklessness — and a gift to China.
Brahma Chellaney is a geostrategist and the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”
