The bromance between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump may have soured, thanks to the latter’s public remarks about the Indian economy and imposition of a 25 percent tariff. The scathing remarks made by Trump, including calling India’s economy “dead”, prompt analysts to believe that Trump could be dismantling decades of work that went into building the US-India bilateral relationship.
Despite Trump’s statement that he will impose secondary penalties on India for buying Russian oil, India refuses to budge, with the Ministry of External Affairs stating that the country is being targeted for importing oil despite the US earlier supporting such purchases for the sake of global market stability.
The MEA statement, amid confirmation that India would continue to buy Russian oil, has suggested that India plans to uphold its strategic autonomy. “Our bilateral relationships with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country,” said MEA Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal, adding that India and Russia have a steady and time-tested partnership.
Though many political and economic observers believe India should wait for Trump to dial back, as the relations between India and the US are deeper than Trump’s statement. However, there are quite a few who believe Trump has done great damage.
Evan A. Feigenbaum of the think tank Carnegie Endowment thinks Trump’s “repoliticisation of bilateral relations was a slow-motion catastrophe.” He argues that domestic politics always nearly trumps foreign policy, and foreign policy arguments almost never prevail unless they are anchored by a strong domestic political foundation. He could be referring to how the issue has landed the Centre in a fix with two options to overcome the current obstacle: either submit to Trump’s demands, which would damage Modi’s strongman image, or face the sky-high tariffs. The domestic situation has turned especially volatile, considering how the opposition has been attacking the Prime Minister.
“American commercial, technological, and societal ties with China became far deeper than they are with India. Yet after four decades of exponential growth and deep connections, those ties have rapidly unraveled in a few short years amid shifting strategic calculations and changed domestic politics,” he adds.
Feigenbaum’s argument that Trump’s scathing remarks have turned into “a combustible domestic political issue in India” has been echoed by political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta too.
In an article that appeared on the UK-based Guardian, Mehta says Trump had already “frankly humiliated the Indian prime minister” over the recent India-Pakistan conflict in May. He added that New Delhi views the US with suspicion, now resembling the 1971 incident when President Richard Nixon sent warships to India, which was considered one of the lowest points of the US-India relationship.
Ashok Malik, a former policy adviser in India’s Foreign Ministry, also thinks this is a testing time for the relationship. “Strenuous, uninterrupted and bipartisan efforts in both capitals over the past 25 years are being put at risk by not just the tariffs but by fast and loose statements and social media posts,” Malik, who now heads the India chapter of The Asia Group, a U.S. advisory firm, told The Associated Press.