The management of India’s relations with the US is becoming a serious challenge. Our ties with the US are the most important that we have, but how to handle them is not for us to do alone. The US has also to play its part. Of course, its ties with India are not the most important that they have, and so there is a mismatch in the weight each side gives to the bilateral relationship. Which is why Trump can take liberties with us, as he is doing.
Limited Alternatives
If the US creates unwarranted difficulties in ties, India can try to look at strengthening other relationships. But these alternatives have limits. We have serious outstanding issues with China that we have not been able to address in the last 75 years. With that record, it is not easy to visualise genuinely friendly ties in the foreseeable future.
Russia remains a steady partner, and a powerful one, but there is a limit to strengthening ties with it as an alternative. Russia cannot provide us with the same volumes of trade, investments and access to modern technology as the US can. The people-to-people ties with Russia lack the dimension of these ties with the US.
Things Were Never This Bad
Our ties with the US, notwithstanding the great progress since 2008 in particular (the nuclear deal), have continued to carry many stress points. The US has sought to interfere in our internal affairs, lectured us on human rights, democracy issues, treatment of minorities, restriction of religious freedoms, etc.
It has never been smooth sailing with the US. We have been resentful of some of the ways in which it has treated us, but we have approached the relationship pragmatically. We have protested but have avoided polemics. During the previous administrations, we were able to manage reasonably well, striking a balance between the positives and the negatives of our ties. That on the US side, they, too, looked positively at India as a geopolitical partner, helped in this.
We had managed reasonably well Trump’s first term, during which Modi and Trump also struck a good personal equation. While Europe was deeply apprehensive about the prospect of Trump getting re-elected for various reasons – both ideological and those related to European security issues – India was not particularly nervous, believing that we had the measure of the man with all his impulsiveness and unpredictability.
The Unique Situation This Time
In the event, we have miscalculated because Trump has delivered serious body blows to our bilateral ties. He has put the issue of tariffs at the centre of our ties, even if we are not unique in this regard as he has also hit all countries, including US allies, with the tariff weapon. The difference is that while US allies, powerful countries or entities in themselves, have succumbed to Trump’s immoderate demands, India, seen as a weaker target, has not yielded on its redlines on agriculture and dairy products. India has sought to negotiate a more balanced interim trade agreement, which is not what Trump wants. He wants a demonstrably one-sided deal in favour of the US. This will not happen as Modi has publicly asserted that India will protect its farmers, milk producers and fishermen, no matter what the cost.
Trump has obsessively called India a “tariff king”. He has highly exaggerated the barriers the US faces in accessing the Indian market, to the point of claiming that the US cannot sell anything to India. Although this is manifestly absurd, this means that he must, for his own image, demonstrate to his base that he has brought India to its heels by compelling it to open its markets in areas of interest to US lobbies. To achieve that goal, he has imposed a 25% tariff on India, to which he has added another 25% as a penalty for India’s oil purchases from Russia. He has mixed trade and non-trade issues, making a way out difficult for both sides.
The Irresponsible Trump & Co
Worse, he has let loose senior members of his administration, such as Treasury Secretary Bessent, Commerce Secretary Lutnik and Trade Adviser Navarro, to pound India on the tariff front. They have gone to absurd lengths, with Lutnik saying almost comically that while India has a population of 1.4 billion people, the US cannot sell a bushel of corn to it. He threatened tough action if India did not remove tariffs. As it happens, India is the fifth-largest producer of corn. Over 60% of this corn is going into cattle and poultry feed. The issue is that India does not permit genetically modified corn for human consumption because of health concerns and adverse public sentiment.
Bessent and Lutnik have made many statements that suggest that they are taking satisfaction from the pain being inflicted on India by the imposition of 25% penalty tariffs. Lutnik thinks that India will come to the table in a month or two and say “sorry” to Trump. Both these senior administration members are strongly advocating penalty tariffs on India by the EU, too. Navarro has gone to the extent of saying that the Ukraine war is Modi’s and that we are responsible for the ongoing killings in Ukraine. There is no thought being given to how India will react to such over-the-top rhetoric by the Trump administration.
No More Phone Calls
Those on both sides who have felt that the downward slide in India-US relations needed to be arrested have advocated some direct contact between Trump and Modi as a way to do so. A telephone call was considered risky by Indian analysts in view of distorted versions that Trump has a habit of putting out on Truth Social or to the media, which project him as the winner and can seriously embarrass those he speaks to. Trump conducts serious diplomacy through social media platforms at the cost of discreet, behind-the-scenes efforts to address differences.
Eventually, Trump has sent some soft messages to Modi, and the latter responded positively. One has to be cautious about what this might mean going ahead. Trump can easily change his tone depending on the mood of the moment, as he keeps contradicting himself as it suits him. The unpredictability he cultivates is unsettling for others – in this case, India, because it is difficult to judge what his bottom line is.
Rein In The Sidekicks
Despite his overtures to Modi, Bessent, Lutnik and Navarro haven’t changed their discourse, which suggests that they have not received any signal to tone down their verbal aggression. The Speaker of the House has now expressed support for imposing penalties on India and China for buying Russian oil. Trump himself has commented adversely about the SCO summit to the effect that India and Russia appear lost to “deepest, darkest” China. He has also been advocating the imposition of 100% tariffs on BRICS countries.
The US ambassador-designate to India, Sergio Gor, has made some positive remarks about India in his confirmation hearings, as is to be expected, but has also made statements that indicate difficulties ahead. He informed the Senators that Trump had made it crystal clear that India must stop buying Russian oil and that he will pursue this goal while in India.
The Provocations Are Not Ours
The Trump administration has made India’s purchases of Russian oil a contentious bilateral issue. The polemics around it have become uncontrolled. India cannot bend on this issue as doing so will mean yielding control over our foreign policy to the US. Moreover, with Putin slated to come to India in December for the annual summit, any step to reduce our oil supplies from Russia under US pressure will, in any case, be most inopportune.
The US has now revoked the waiver on the Chabahar port project and henceforth subject those associated with it to sanctions. This is a direct hit to a connectivity project that India has promoted for access to Afghanistan and Central Asia. Strategically, this project allows India to raise its profile in this region and balance China’s hold. Trump has also launched another missile at India on the HIB visa system, of which India is the biggest beneficiary.
Some Indian commentators say that India could have handled Trump better. In actual fact, Trump should be handling India better. All the provocations have come from Trump and the sycophants around him.
(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author