For all the turbulence Donald Trump has introduced into American foreign policy, the relationship between the United States and India has proved harder to break. During his second term, Trump has treated tariffs as instruments of diplomacy, pressured India over its purchases of Russian oil, cultivated Pakistan and pursued a transactional relationship with China. For New Delhi, this has made Washington’s commitment to the Asian balance of power less predictable.
Nonetheless, India has not retreated from the United States. Narendra Modi is keeping Washington at the centre of India’s strategy while building alternatives to ensure that no single partner can hold the country hostage. India is not trying to stand equidistant from Washington, Beijing and Moscow. It is trying to make itself less vulnerable to the choices of any one of them.
The United States is a big market for Indian goods and services, a source of capital and advanced technology, and an important military ‘partner.’ China cannot provide those advantages on comparable terms, while Russia is increasingly unable to do so either. At the same time, India has good reason to avoid excessive dependence on an American administration that has demonstrated a willingness to use economic pressure against partners. Trump has given India more reasons to hedge against America while simultaneously reinforcing the underlying reasons for partnership with it.
The deterioration in political chemistry has been striking. Modi had welcomed Trump’s first presidency and cultivated an unusually warm personal relationship with him. Their public appearances in Houston and Ahmedabad in 2019 and 2020 turned personal rapport into political symbolism. Defence cooperation expanded, the two governments converged on China, and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—the Quad, with Australia and Japan—was revived as an important regional grouping.
Modi initially approached Trump’s second presidency in much the same spirit. However, the relationship quickly became transactional. In August 2025, the Trump administration doubled tariffs on Indian goods to 50 per cent, citing India’s purchases of Russian oil. The additional 25 per cent levy was subsequently removed in February 2026, when Washington and New Delhi announced an interim trade framework under which the US would apply an 18 per cent reciprocal tariff on Indian goods.
The episode nevertheless exposed a problem. India can tolerate American pressure more easily when it believes Washington is applying broadly consistent rules. It finds selective pressure harder to accept. That sensitivity was heightened by Trump’s intervention in India-Pakistan affairs. After the fighting between the two countries in May 2025, Trump claimed a role in bringing about the ceasefire. New Delhi rejected the implication that outside mediation had settled the matter, maintaining its longstanding position that India and Pakistan should manage their disputes bilaterally.
Washington’s subsequent enthusiasm for Pakistan added to Indian unease. Trump developed a close relationship with Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, while Pakistan acquired greater diplomatic prominence in American calculations. For Indian strategists, this was not merely a question of personalities. For decades, the possibility that America might again treat Pakistan as a strategically valuable counterweight has been one of the deepest sources of Indian suspicion towards Washington.
China presents a bigger dilemma. During Trump’s first term, Washington worked with India, Japan and Australia to build a regional coalition intended to constrain Chinese power. His second-term diplomacy has been more complicated. Trump has devoted considerable attention to Xi Jinping and has shown a willingness to explore accommodation with Beijing even while maintaining significant economic pressure on China. That uncertainty has unsettled countries that spent years assuming American power would be the principal external counterweight to China.
Nonentless, India did not abandon the Quad. Instead, it has sought to ensure that the grouping remains useful irrespective of fluctuations in American political attention. Quad foreign ministers met in New Delhi in May 2026 and again in Manila in July, demonstrating that the grouping remains operational, characterising India’s approach: preserve institutions, deepen relationships and avoid being forced into a public choice between Washington and other powers.
There is a historical reason for such caution. India spent decades being suspicious of America. During the Cold War, Washington’s partnership with Pakistan, its opening to China and India’s own relationship with the Soviet Union kept the two countries strategically distant.
The transformation began after the Cold War, but it took years to acquire momentum. The civil nuclear agreement negotiated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W. Bush in 2005 was especially important because it helped end India’s isolation from international nuclear commerce and demonstrated that Washington was prepared to treat India as a strategic partner rather than as a difficult non-aligned state.
Under Modi, India built relationships with Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden. The two governments concluded foundational defence agreements, expanded intelligence and military cooperation, and developed closer ties in critical technologies. The Quad became substantial, defence exercises multiplied and American companies became increasingly embedded in India’s economic and technological ambitions. The relationship consequently ceased to depend on presidential chemistry alone.
That institutionalisation explains why Trump’s volatility has not produced a rupture. The relationship has too many constituencies to be easily dismantled: the armed forces, technology companies, manufacturers, universities, investors and the Indian diaspora all have interests in keeping it functional. Economics provides the strongest anchor. US goods and services trade with India reached an estimated $239.6 billion in 2025, making the American market more important to India’s export ambitions than either Russia or China.
China is indispensable as a supplier of manufactured goods, but the relationship is heavily asymmetric, with India running a large merchandise deficit. Russia remains important principally because of energy and defence, rather than because it is a major market for Indian products or a source of frontier technologies.
India’s diversification should therefore not be mistaken for neutrality. New Delhi has been widening its economic relationships with countries capable of supplementing the American connection. India’s trade diplomacy illustrates the point. The India-UK Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement entered into force in July 2026, while India and the European Union announced the conclusion of their free-trade negotiations earlier in the year. India has also pursued a free-trade agreement with New Zealand. These relationships are not substitutes for America. They are insurance policies against excessive dependence on it.
The same logic applies to Russia. India has maintained substantial energy and defence ties with Moscow, even as Russia has become increasingly dependent on China. Russia remains useful because it supplies oil and because decades of defence cooperation have created an enormous stock of Russian-origin equipment. But Russia is no longer a plausible external balancer against China. Its growing economic and strategic reliance on Beijing makes that impossible. The invasion of Ukraine has only reinforced the imbalance.
China is more complicated. New Delhi has every incentive to reduce the risk of conflict with its largest neighbour. Border tensions have eased from their most dangerous phase, and India has taken steps to restore economic and diplomatic links. But rapprochement should not be confused with trust.
China remains India’s principal long-term military challenge, possesses greater economic resources and defence spending, and enjoys a deepening relationship with Pakistan. The two countries can therefore cooperate without becoming strategic partners. That reality gives America a durable role. India needs intelligence, surveillance capabilities, military technology, maritime cooperation and access to networks of countries capable of complicating Chinese power. Washington and its allies can provide these in ways that Beijing and Moscow cannot. Nor is the relationship simply about buying American weapons.
India’s economic strategy increasingly depends on participation in advanced technology and resilient supply chains. The February 2026 US-India interim trade framework explicitly linked market access to supply-chain resilience and technology cooperation. India also indicated its intention to purchase $500 billion of American energy, technology products, aircraft and other goods over five years. India is therefore willing to make concessions to Washington even after suffering considerable pressure. But it is simultaneously trying to make sure that future American pressure has fewer points of leverage. There is, however, a limit to this strategy.
A foreign policy can be flexible only so long as domestic politics permits it. Modi has so far absorbed criticism that he is too accommodating towards Washington. But an American administration that repeatedly humiliates India could eventually make restraint politically expensive. That danger is greater when Washington appears to treat India more harshly than other countries pursuing similar policies.
The proposed American legislation on Russian energy is a case in point. A revised Russia sanctions bill passed the Senate in July and would give the president authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on major buyers of Russian energy, potentially including India and China. The legislation is not yet law, but its very existence demonstrates how exposed India remains to decisions made in Washington. If such measures were applied to India without comparable treatment of other partners, the economic damage would matter. The political symbolism could matter more.
There is a long memory of double standards in international politics. Anti-Americanism is no longer the dominant force it once was, but it has not disappeared. An American policy that makes Indians believe Washington values India principally as a market, a counterweight to China or a customer for American goods could revive it.
Even then, a rupture would be unlikely. The alternatives are too poor. China might offer investment and trade, but closer alignment would require India to accept a regional balance increasingly shaped by Beijing. Russia can supply commodities and maintain defence links, but cannot provide the capital, markets or technological ecosystem India needs for rapid modernisation. Groupings such as BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation can give India diplomatic room to manoeuvre, but they cannot substitute for the practical capabilities supplied by the United States.
The sensible conclusion is therefore less dramatic than either side might wish. India is not choosing between America and the rest. It is choosing how much exposure to America it can safely tolerate while still extracting the enormous benefits of the relationship. Modi’s answer so far has been to diversify without defecting. That may be a pragmatic response to Trump’s unpredictability. His foreign policy has made American reliability harder to assume, but it has not altered the geography of India’s interests. China remains the principal strategic challenge. The United States remains the most consequential external partner for balancing it and accelerating India’s economic and technological rise. The rational Indian policy is therefore neither dependence nor estrangement.
For Washington, there is an uncomfortable lesson. A great power can use tariffs to obtain concessions, but it cannot tariff its way into Indian strategic trust. Every threat that produces a commercial concession may also encourage New Delhi to deepen relationships elsewhere.
If America wants India to remain its partner in the Indo-Pacific, it must recognise that partnership is not something India owes it. It is an asset that has to be made worth keeping. For now, New Delhi is holding on to its valuable strategic relationship while cultivating the insurance policies that an unpredictable America has made more attractive. The danger is not that India will suddenly choose China or Russia. It is that Washington will gradually persuade India that it needs America less than it once thought.
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