US-India Ties: Does Trump Have a Grand Strategy?

on Monday

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the US strategy has been to woo India and to build it up as a counterweight to rising China in the Indo-Pacific region. Most beltway analysts agree with this policy. However, the current Trump administration has taken significant actions, such as the imposition of 50% tariffs on India's exports to the US, that appear to defy this conventional wisdom widely shared in the West. Does President Trump have a grand strategy guiding these actions? George Friedman, the founder of Geopolitical Futures, believes the answer is Yes.

George Friedman

George Friedman is an American futurologist, political scientist, and writer. He writes about international relations. He is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures. Prior to founding Geopolitical Futures, he was chairman of the publishing company Stratfor

In a recent podcast, Friedman said "India is not an essential country from the American standpoint". "They (Indians) are a useful ally, but precisely not indispensable and in fact, not really able to give us what we want", he added. "They do participate in the quad, but their naval force is not significantly needed. The quad being an alliance basically against China at sea. And simultaneously, it was discovered that their economic capacity is far below what we need. So it was not that they were dispensable, but at the same time, it was not something that we had to take into account greatly".

Getting tough with the Indians also allowed the US to "signal to the Chinese that we’re not going to be going to war with them, which they worried about India and to the Russians that we really are going to impose tariffs".

In answer to a question as to whether the Indians might feel the US is using them as "a tool as it tries to reach deals with Russia and China", Friedman said: "this is the problem of weaker nations trying to play games with very strong nations. They get used".

What Friedman has articulated runs counter to a quarter century of the US policy of boosting India to check China. Even some of India's friends in Washington are starting to acknowledge that India is no match to China. Ashley Tellis, a strongly pro-India analyst in the United States, recently wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs magazine titled "India's Great Power Delusions". Here is an excerpt from it:

"Although India has grown in economic strength over the last two decades, it is not growing fast enough to balance China, let alone the United States, even in the long term. It will become a great power, in terms of relative GDP, by midcentury, but not a superpower. In military terms, it is the most significant conventional power in South Asia, but here, too, its advantages over its local rival are not enormous: in fighting in May, Pakistan used Chinese-supplied defense systems to shoot down Indian aircraft. With China on one side and an adversarial Pakistan on the other, India must always fear the prospect of an unpalatable two-front war. Meanwhile, at home, the country is shedding one of its main sources of strength—its liberal democracy—by embracing Hindu nationalism. This evolution could undermine India’s rise by intensifying communal tensions and exacerbating problems with its neighbors, forcing it to redirect security resources inward to the detriment of outward power projection. The country’s illiberal pivot further undermines the rules-based international order that has served it so well".

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Trump calls India-U.S. trade relationship 'a totally one sided disaster'

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/trump-india-us-china-tariffs-trade....

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called trade ties with India “a totally one sided disaster!”
“They [India] have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
This comes against the backdrop of the U.S. imposing 50% tariffs on the country, including secondary duties of 25% last month for purchasing Russian oil.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday doubled down on his criticism of India, calling trade ties with the country “a totally one sided disaster!” after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited China to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

Trump in a post on Truth Social also said that India had offered to cut its tariffs to zero, but it was “getting late,” and that the country should have done so “years ago,” without elaborating on when such an offer was made.

This comes against the backdrop of the U.S. imposing 50% tariffs on the country, including secondary duties of 25% last month for purchasing Russian oil, which India has called “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable.”

Trump reiterated that India was buying oil and arms from Russia, and accused New Delhi of selling the U.S. “massive amounts of goods,” but imposing high tariffs on U.S. exports to India.

“The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high Tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one sided disaster!” he wrote.

Data from the World Trade Organization shows that India imposed a 6.2% average tariff on U.S. imports into the country in 2024, on a trade-weighted basis, while U.S. levied 2.4% on Indian goods. The trade-weighted average is the average rate of duty per imported value unit.

The U.S.-India relations have soured over the past couple of months, upending more than two decades of improving ties, with several U.S. officials increasing their criticism of New Delhi over its Russian oil imports. India has called out the U.S. and European Union for their trade with Russia, while targeting New Delhi.

India’s foreign ministry last month said “it is revealing that the very nations criticizing India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia. Unlike our case, such trade is not even a vital national compulsion [for them].”

Back in May, India had reportedly offered a “zero-for-zero” tariff deal on steel, auto components and pharmaceuticals on a reciprocal basis, up to a certain quantity of imports. However, both New Delhi and Washington failed to come to a trade deal, leading Trump to impose 50% tariffs on Indian exports.

India’s Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the SCO summit in Tianjin held between between Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, with both sides affirming the importance of being partners, not rivals.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday played down the idea that U.S. tariffs were bringing countries like China and India closer together, describing the SCO summit as “performative,” according to Reuters.

Experts have said that the improving relations between New Delhi and Beijing would benefit the two countries, but have cast doubt over them becoming close partners due to long-standing disputes.

“The improvement of relations with India is a big deal. It allows India to access highly critical intellectual property that it needs if it is to industrialize and boost manufacturing,” Marko Papic, chief strategist, GeoMacro Strategy BCA Access, said in an email.

“But, over the long term, the U.S. is losing the propaganda battle to paint China as the trouble-maker-in-chief. And that only further ossifies multipolarity,” he said.

8 hours ago
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Chinese, Russian, Indian Leaders Pledge Cooperation, in a Message to Trump - The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/world/chinese-russian-indian-leaders-pledge-coo...

These tariffs (on India) are higher than those enacted against China, America’s strategic rival, and have been accompanied by many statements by Trump administration officials that amplify Indian anger. Trump’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, caused particular outcry in recent days by using caste terminology as he said that Indian “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people” with the Russia oil trade. The Trump administration so far hasn’t enacted any additional sanctions on Russia itself, despite repeated threats to do so.

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Trump administration officials have explained their opening to Putin as part of a so-called “reverse Kissinger” strategy that would pry Moscow away from its growing dependence on Beijing, which has provided an economic lifeline to Russia after Western sanctions were imposed because of the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While the final statement of the Shanghai summit didn’t mention Ukraine, Putin dedicated much of the speech to the war, saying that the “crisis” didn’t begin with the Russian invasion but with what he described as a Western-backed coup in 2014. He added that, for the war to end, the supposed root causes must be addressed—a Kremlin shorthand for Ukrainian aspirations to pursue policies independent from Moscow.

“The ‘reverse Kissinger’ doesn’t work. India’s alignment with the Russia-China dynamic, even partially or pragmatically, would signify the strengthening of a new world order led by China, and a narrowing of the strategic room for maneuver available to the United States and its allies in Asia,” said Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the foreign-affairs committee of the Estonian parliament.

8 hours ago
Riaz Haq

Sushant Singh
@SushantSin
Many myths of India’s ruling regime that have been busted by Trump’s tariffs. Two (three) of them here.

1. US-India ties enjoy bipartisan support in Washington.Not true under Trump. New Delhi should have anticipated this and recalibrated its approach.

2. Indian diaspora in the US is very powerful. Trump's overwhelming support from the right has blunted it.

3. Goals and ideologies of the right-wing in both countries align. Many in India prayed for Trump's victory and celebrated it.

https://x.com/SushantSin/status/1962842457143447833

8 hours ago

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US-India Ties: Does Trump Have a Grand Strategy?

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