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Trump’s war with tariffs has become a global challenge, not only for America’s traditional adversaries, but increasingly also for countries and governments who thought they were allies or had started building up promising ties with the world’s dominant superpower. Let us put aside the case of Europe and consider the Indo-Pacific area only. Trump’s trade war with China is a given, whether economically sensible or not. But what is he doing to his most reliable longtime strategic partners like Japan and South Korea? And what to India, the relatively recent, but increasingly central pillar in the US’ strategic concept of containing Chinese regional expansion? By extending and strengthening alliances and networks over the whole region surrounding China, it seemed that the US had found a most effective tool for protecting democracies and other friendly partners in the region and thus promoting US interests. Of course, US strategies always served the superpower’s genuine interests before helping others.

Herein, President Clinton’s move, in 2000, to offer India a strategic partnership, was particularly smart. It opened a non-confrontational path, for the Indian leadership, to get away from old loyalties with the defunct Soviet Union and to get closer to promising partnerships, which triggered political and material support for a change from ineffective old socialist programs to productive new developments towards deregulation, more market economy and growth. While staying loyal to its traditional “sovereign strategic autonomy” in international affairs, Indian leadership, after all, had visibly recognised that India’s future lies in association and cooperation with the successful of this world, which are the US and the Western world in general, and not with declining Russia. And most importantly: it would make more sense in view of India’s antagonistic relationship with China, its top security trauma since it had lost a war in 1962.

Against this background, Trump’s tariff hammer is possibly knocking down years of political, military and economic assistance. Since, in Trump’s logic, tariffs should force trading partners to invest and produce in the USA, India, who has the same priorities, finds itself in competition with the US and cannot dream of a special treatment regarding tariffs. One more disappointment for India certainly are Trump’s immigration policies. IT-specialists, highly valued on the US labour market, are also an important financial source for transfer payments to India. Indians are among the hardest hit by the recent changes in residence and work permit policies including repatriations. Finally, procurement cooperation, too, will change. Instead of developing India’s capacity to develop and produce military hardware, it will be required to buy in America. Such a move is unlikely to draw India away from its old dependency on Russia in this field.

These recent developments have been resented by Prime Minister Modi as a dramatic snub. Without much noise or official declarations, Modi has on his side operated a strategic shift whose consequences will be perceptible soon. It started with the fact, that Modi has repeatedly swallowed certain unfriendly moves from China, his adversary since long. Geopolitical analysts are seeing growing signs of Modi’s recognition that a difficult relationship with China has become less costly than accepting repeated and continuing discredits from Washington. For Modi this development boils down to serious doubts about unconditional US support in a case of a military confrontation with China. In an overall strategic evaluation for India, China has become a lesser evil than the USA. Between the superpowers of the Indo-Pacific, China is winning India over from the USA under Trump and his volatile and irresponsible policies unworthy of trust.

9th September 2025, Philippe Welti
 

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