President Donald Trump has declared that the US has “lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China,” even as he piles fresh tariff threats on New Delhi over its continued purchase of Russian oil.
Posting a photo of Narendra Modi alongside Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at this week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”
The statement marks a shift from Trump’s earlier position, when he brushed off concerns that the tariffs could spark an anti-US alliance. At the time, he had said, “I am not concerned at all… We have the strongest military in the world, by far. They would never use their military on us. Believe me.”
The outburst comes just as Trump has been rattling his tariff sabre again, warning that he has not yet rolled out “Phase 2 and Phase 3” duties against India and other countries that continue trade with Russia.
“Two weeks ago, I said if India buys, India has big problems, and that’s what happens,” he said on Thursday, insisting tariffs are the only language Delhi understands.
The ministry of external affairs declined to react to Trump’s latest statements. “I have no comments to offer on this post at this time,” ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
But Jaiswal did fire back at White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s incendiary remarks last week accusing India of acting as an “oil money laundromat for the Kremlin.” Jaiswal said, “We have seen the inaccurate and misleading statements made by Navarro, and obviously reject them.”
Trump’s decision to slam India last week with a world-leading 50 per cent tariff, the highest alongside Brazil, has already been ruled unlawful by a US appeals court, a decision the administration has appealed.
Trump shows no signs of retreating on the levies imposed on India, boasting on US radio: “China kills us with tariffs, India kills us with tariffs, Brazil kills us with tariffs. I understood tariffs better than any human being in the world.”
Trump doubled US tariffs on Indian imports to punish India for its refusal to stop buying discounted Russian oil, which he alleged was funding the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. India has defended its energy trade with Russia as an economic necessity to ensure affordable fuel for the country’s 1.46-billion population and noted it has helped keep global oil prices steady.
India has condemned the US tariff action as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable” and questioned why it alone has been targeted, even as China, the world’s largest importer of Russian oil, remains untouched.
Trump’s US political opponents have already voiced sharp criticism, accusing the President of taking a wrecking ball to the India-US relationship and pushing India into the arms of China. Furthermore, they say it will hurt US importers, disrupt supply chains, push up domestic prices, and alienate India at a time when cooperation is vital for countering China’s influence in the Indo-Pacific.
US Representative Gregory Meeks, a senior Democrat, said Trump’s “tariff tantrum” threatens over two decades of diplomatic efforts to build a strong relationship between Washington and New Delhi.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs has gone further, calling Trump’s tariff policy “the stupidest tactical move in US foreign policy.” Evan A. Feigenbaum, in a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment, says what’s happening now in US-India relations “is a slow-motion catastrophe”.
Similarly, Condoleezza Rice, who was secretary of state during the George W. Bush presidency and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser during the Joe Biden era, both sharply criticised Trump’s huge tariffs on India.
Chief economic advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran, meanwhile, predicts Trump’s tariff blitz won’t last: “This approach will not be a long-term positive thing in terms of the overall relationship.” He warned the oil duties could hammer India’s GDP, jobs, and exports into next year.
Analysts say Trump’s tariff fusillade is pushing India closer to China and Russia, undercutting the Quad and weakening Washington’s hand in Asia.
Even if the US relents on the tariffs, the days of Modi hugging Trump on stage appear to be over. The White House has reportedly shelved plans for Trump to attend the Quad summit later this year.
What’s angered India is Trump’s hobnobbing at the White House with Pakistan’s army chief and giving Islamabad a preferential tariff rate. That’s not to mention the volley of insults Trump has lobbed at India, including calling it a “dead economy.”
Despite Trump’s trade antics, India maintains that its ties with Washington remain a strategic partnership. Jaiswal underscored that position on Friday: “There is a comprehensive global strategic partnership between the two countries, and we want to work on this partnership and take it forward,” he said.
“This partnership has weathered several transitions and challenges. We hope the relationship will continue to move forward based on mutual respect,” he concluded.
On a similar but slightly more pessimistic note, analyst Michael Kugelman noted: “India has of course not been ‘lost’ to China. But this continuous overheated rhetoric from the President is galvanizing his base & driving narratives against India on sensitive issues like visa and immigration. With the relationship in crisis, this isn’t merely background noise.” Kugelman is a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation.
Whether India and China have truly patched up their fractured relationship is also open to question. Modi, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin appeared to be very cordial in the photographs that were released. However, China’s Global Times newspaper released photos of Xi greeting various world leaders individually on page one but Modi wasn’t amongst them.