As the world’s fastest-growing major economy and its most populous democracy, India would appear to make a natural partner for the United States. Working together, the U.S. and India can advance their common prosperity, boost scientific cooperation, and defend democratic interests from a Chinese communist autocracy bent on global domination.
The problem is that India continues to view the benefits of U.S. relations through the outsize ledger of “getting” rather than “giving.” In turn, President Donald Trump is justified in adopting a tougher stance on India over its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
In recent days, Trump has warned that he will soon impose punitive new tariffs on India in response to its continued imports of Russian oil. Trump has set a Friday deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine. If not, he says Russia will suffer secondary sanctions, those targeting Russian export markets, of the kind that his threatened tariffs on India would represent.
Trump announced Wednesday that India will face 50% tariffs on Indian imports into the U.S. if India continues to purchase Russian oil. That is a big deal. India’s purchases are estimated to account for around 30% of Russia’s total global energy sales, generating tens of billions of dollars for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government. Amid Western sanctions, these sales provide the Kremlin with the critical funding ingredient for its war machine. The sales also allow Putin to dole out financial aid to his citizens, state authorities, and key regime supporters. These sales thus reflect the fact that India is indirectly supporting the continuation of the most consequential war on the European continent since 1945.
Indian commentators are balking at Trump’s threats. They view the president’s tariff warnings as disrespectful rebukes against improving U.S.-India relations. At a more philosophical level, Indians also resent what they regard as American pressure to break with their country’s traditional nonaligned diplomatic strategy. That strategy has centered on avoiding alliances in favor of global case-by-case cooperation.
These criticisms are self-indulgent, with one big exception: Trump’s failure to impose similar tariffs on China over its even greater purchases of Russian energy supplies. That discrepancy is plainly unjustifiable.
Still, Indian complaints greatly underplay the significant steps taken by the U.S. in recent years to bolster India’s security, economic, and diplomatic position. India has welcomed these actions, at least tacitly recognizing that they represent a growing expenditure of American political capital in New Delhi’s favor. America’s problem is that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and the Indian foreign policy establishment seem to think that they don’t have to reciprocate here. They seem to believe that India should have the right to continue eating American political cake and ignoring key American concerns.
The disparity in what the U.S. has done for India and what India has done for the U.S. is particularly pronounced in the security domain.
Take the U.S. Army exercises in India near highly contested areas alongside the Chinese border. In the context of clashes that have caused the deaths of dozens of Indian soldiers, these exercises hint that America might stand with India during a major land war far from America’s own borders. That presents a powerful deterrent message to China.
Albeit often quietly, the U.S. has also significantly escalated its sharing of sensitive military technology and knowledge with all branches of the Indian armed forces. And Washington has provided intelligence related to Pakistan and China that is of high value to New Delhi’s territorial defense.
In return, however, the U.S. has received only occasional joint naval exercises with India in the Western Pacific, though a landmark Philippines-India exercise is underway, and only very tentative efforts to deter Putin’s systemic threat to European and U.S. security. India even allows the Russian intelligence services to run rampant in New Delhi, enabling them to harm American citizens.
This leaves us in a dynamic in which India continues to extract high-value U.S. diplomatic, economic, and military support simply by showing a little more skepticism toward Russia, a little more cooperation against China’s maritime threats, and a few more red carpet visits for U.S. officials — most recently, Vice President JD Vance and his family.
This does not mean that Trump’s India policy is perfect or even very good. On the contrary, Trump’s skepticism of Indian high-value skilled labor and of efforts to bolster India’s export base are shortsighted. Trump’s generalized tariff policy is also a poor tool of diplomacy that damages U.S. consumer interests. Trump’s shields-up approach to India’s economic revolution will ultimately weaken America’s own economic potential, the key U.S. strategic interest in diversifying lower- and medium-value supply chains out of China, and the future opportunity of American businesses to benefit from a rapidly growing middle-class consumer market. Trump’s casual disregard for Indian emotional sensitivities is also problematic.
Take, for example, Trump’s foolish decision to host Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Asim Munir, for a White House lunch. Coming shortly after the recent cross-border feud between India and Pakistan, Trump’s lunch left a very bitter taste in New Delhi. That feud followed a terrorist attack on Indian civilians by Pakistan-based terrorists. The Pakistan Army perniciously leverages these terrorist groups for its own agenda. India’s prospective anger over the lunch should have been obvious to the president. Indeed, why Trump thought this lunch was conducive to U.S. interests at all is also unclear: the Pakistan Army’s ISI intelligence service, which Munir previously led, has a lot of U.S. military blood on its hands via its support for Taliban and associated groups. If nothing else, Pakistan’s status as a de facto colony of China should also motivate Trump to prioritize New Delhi’s concerns as far more important than those of Islamabad.
Nevertheless, the exigent importance of pressuring Russia to engage in serious, concessionary negotiations with Ukraine provides ample justification for Trump’s India tariffs. These tariffs may be a blunt instrument and offend the Washington political and commentariat elite, but they can generate valuable strategic effects.
It’s the economy, stupid.
More precisely, it’s the reality that a Russian economy that was already fragile prior to Putin’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine is today greatly weakened. The last three years have seen a vast diversion of resources to Russia’s military industrial base, a grave shortage of skilled labor and private investment, sustainably high inflation, even greater levels of corruption, authoritarianism rising to the level of civic suffocation, and declining living standards.
But to bring Putin to the negotiating table in a condition of sincerity, he must first feel that the costs of continuing his war are beginning to outweigh the costs of continuation. And if India stops buying Russian energy supplies, and Turkey does the same, Putin’s balance sheet will implode. It can be done.
Contrary to New Delhi’s pledge that it won’t bend to Trump’s demands, judged against India’s rising export market to the U.S., $77 billion in 2024, and the availability of alternate energy supplies at not greatly increased price points, India will likely abandon its Russia trade if Trump holds firm. India will suffer greatly from sustained tariff limitations on its access to the U.S. market. Some Indian oil import companies are already shifting away from Russian suppliers.
Moreover, Trump’s cause is plainly a moral and necessary one. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost in the Ukraine war so far. But Putin continues to inflict mayhem and misery on innocent people who wish only to live free. Bolder action is needed to corral his aggression.
Yes, these tariffs will harm U.S.-India relations. Yes, they will degrade trust. But so be it.
This uncomfortable reality reflects a broader truth that too many foreign policy analysts are unwilling to consider. I disagree with the nominal godfather of conservative foreign policy analysis, Walter Russel Mead, for example, who suggests a need for greater patience toward India. The urgent challenges of today’s world are sometimes too complicated to avoid hard trade-offs. If you want to prioritize addressing one issue, in this case, honorably ending the war in Ukraine, you sometimes must accept costs to your interests on another issue, in this case, calm U.S.-India relations.
India’s funding of Putin’s war effort runs fundamentally counter to the just cause of peace, to the national security interests of many close American allies in Europe, and to the post-1945 principle of democratic sovereign inviolability — something you’d think India would care more about in light of its China border concerns.
TRUMP BOLSTERS MILITARY’S NUCLEAR READINESS TO DETER RUSSIA
Trump would do well to offer Modi a more open ear on matters of economic cooperation. He would do well to treat Pakistan for the terrorist state it is. But more than three years after Russia began the worst land war in Europe since 1945, it’s time to increase the pressure on Moscow.
Even if that pressure flows through New Delhi.