Still nursing the bruises from Donald Trump’s 50% tariffs, India has arrived at a fresh, bitter conclusion: the American president seems perfectly happy to rough up New Delhi while giving Beijing, Russia’s real economic lifeline, a free pass.
India’s political establishment, which had once rolled out the red carpet for Trump and convinced itself that the two countries were on the cusp of a mutually beneficial pact, is now somewhere between dazed and humiliated. Few could have predicted the indignity of being almost the only country to leave the negotiating table with tariffs higher than those initially threatened.
Little wonder, then, that the foreign ministry’s reaction was relatively restrained. Clinging to the hope that talks might still be salvaged, it labelled the tariffs “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, correctly noting that the US continues to buy billions of dollars’ worth of fertiliser and uranium from Russia every year. And, in the time-honoured tradition of global diplomacy, the statement also had a go at the EU. Criticising Brussels is, after all, an international pastime, even among Europeans.
India is hardly alone in its frustration. Japan, for example, has quietly resumed crude imports from Russia, yet no one in Washington seems to care. What New Delhi’s statement didn’t mention is that Beijing faces no real sanctions for its massive purchases of Russian energy.
Behind the polite diplomatic language, the resentment is real. If Trump genuinely wanted to “control” Moscow, China would be the obvious target, it offers far more political and economic support to Vladimir Putin than India ever could. But Beijing, it seems, is now too big to be bullied. Its negotiators will likely be given more time, more leeway, and more opportunities to keep backing Moscow without consequence, privileges that New Delhi can only dream of.
If New Delhi is smarting from this double standard, it’s now the United States, not China, that will feel the heat. Indian policymakers who would have cheered a US trade war with Beijing view things somewhat differently when Washington sidesteps China to pick a fight with India. In the end, this only reinforces China’s position as the one country Trump apparently cannot, or will not, intimidate.
The irony is that Russian energy is nowhere near as critical to India as the headlines suggest. Credit rating agency ICRA reckons India saved just $3.8 billion last year from buying discounted Russian crude, a drop in the ocean compared with the $242 billion it spent on total oil imports. And those savings hardly made it into ordinary Indians’ pockets, since much of the refined product was re-exported to help other countries’ consumers.
Given that Russian prices have been slipping, most in New Delhi assumed the shift to other suppliers would come sooner rather than later. What they didn’t expect was to be pushed into it prematurely, without the cushion of a broader trade agreement. That, as they are learning, was naïve.
The political cost is now substantial. Modi’s opponents, seizing a rare chance to outflank him on nationalism, have accused him of weakness in the face of Trump. And India’s intellectual class, never short of anti-American sentiment, has found new fuel in what it sees as a gratuitous stigmatisation of the country. Surrounded by voices insisting that “national pride” is at stake, decision-making in New Delhi is now more emotional than rational.
In part, the government has only itself to blame. By overselling the modest gains from trade with Russia as a matter of vital national interest, it now faces the awkward task of extricating itself from the mess without looking like it has caved in.
Other nations that share India’s irritation are already circling. Brazil’s President Lula, stung by what are widely seen as politically motivated US tariffs, has urged Modi to form a united front against Trump. High-level delegations are reportedly heading to Moscow, and Modi himself may even attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in China, a gathering dominated by Beijing.
A year ago, the thought of Modi in Beijing would have been unthinkable; in seven years as prime minister, he has never set foot there. And yet, in the current climate, it makes perfect sense. When the only country Trump can’t seem to browbeat is also the only one that can offer shelter from his wrath, geopolitics suddenly becomes a lot more pragmatic, and a lot more humiliating for those still clinging to the idea of “like-minded democracies” standing together.
The long-term picture is even bleaker for Washington. By picking fights with second-tier partners while avoiding its true strategic rival, the US is performing the geopolitical equivalent of gift-wrapping alliances for Beijing and Moscow. India, the supposed counterweight to China in Asia, is being pushed into the arms of its neighbour. Old, dependable allies like South Korea and Japan are quietly reassessing their loyalties, watching the White House alternate between neglect and transactional opportunism. And Europe? Humiliated, marginalised, and increasingly left to fend for itself. Piece by piece, Washington is uniting a coalition of the aggrieved. This bloc includes major economies, nuclear powers, and vast consumer markets, not through shared ideology, but through shared resentment of America’s erratic bullying. The result is a slow erosion of Western cohesion, the very foundation on which US global dominance rests. Once that unity fractures, it won’t be China that isolates itself; it will be the United States. And the West will discover, too late, that it didn’t collapse under enemy fire, but from the friendly fire of its own short-sighted arrogance.