Future tense: Trump and Lutnick want Modi to fall in line

Hours after US President Donald Trump’s post on Friday that the US appeared to have 'lost' India to China, US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg, "India needs to decide which side they want to be on… India doesn't yet want to open their market. Stop buying Russian oil, stop being a part of BRICS... Support US, pay 50 per cent tariff. Let us see how long this lasts… India will say sorry to the US”.

The future of Indo-US relations looks tense. While it is too early to conclude that the breach is final, the prospect of China, Russia, Iran and now India coming together against the US — the worst nightmare of American strategic thinkers — seems more real than ever.

On Friday, the US President posted an old photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi a step behind the presidents of Russia and China and wrote, ‘…May they have a long and prosperous future together’.

This appears to spell the end of the long courtship between Trump and Modi. The Indian PM, who went out of his way to court Trump, was among the first world leaders to rush to Washington DC to congratulate Trump on his second term as president. He pledged to buy American arms and gas, increase bilateral trade, and had a cringeworthy meeting with Elon Musk and his children. Musk was still close to Trump then, and the meeting was part of the courtship rituals.

Trump on his part was also effusive. Complimenting Modi as a ‘great man’ and a ‘friend’, he however complained of India charging too-high import duties on American goods. He cribbed about the relatively small trade deficit that the US had with India on goods trade (nothing compared to the US deficit with China and the EU).

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on India

"In a month or 2 month, India will be on the table, & say sorry. They will try to make a deal with Donald Trump. It will be on Donald Trump's desk & how he will deal with Modi"pic.twitter.com/nXid27dW4q

— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) September 5, 2025

Looks like we lost India, Russia to 'deepest, darkest' China: Donald Trump

Nobody spoke of services because the US enjoys a huge trade surplus when it comes to services. While India was quick to start negotiations for a trade deal and apparently came close to signing it, the relationship had begun to sour by April, when Trump first unveiled his proposed tariffs and then offered a 90-day reprieve for India to fall in line.

It was in April that the US president began to swipe at BRICS nations, warned member countries of even higher tariffs and darkly said the BRICS move to trade in local currencies in place of the US dollar was a red line that they would cross at their peril.

May saw India’s unilateral attack on Pakistan, ostensibly to avenge the 22 April terror attack in Pahalgam. It led to the two countries getting into an aerial skirmish and firing missiles at each other. Curiously, it was the US president who announced the ceasefire on 10 May and claimed credit for brokering it. He further claimed that he had threatened the two countries with no trade unless they ended the war, and thus prevented a nuclear escalation. He has repeated the claim around 40 times since then, with two feeble rebuttals by India.

Trump rubbed it in by hyphenating India and Pakistan, inviting hardliner Pakistani army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, the real de facto ruler, to a private lunch at the White House, seeking his mediation with Iran and declaring that the US looked forward to trade in minerals and rare earth with Islamabad.

Modi was left looking inept and helpless, with the Americans letting it be known that the White House was unhappy with the concessions India was ready to make. Trump wanted more and for India to open up its agriculture and dairy sectors to American producers. That was a red line that India was not ready to cross, at least not in the foreseeable future.

The bone of contention then shifted to India buying the then cheaper Russian oil, and refining it before exporting it to Europe and other countries.

India, the ‘jilted lover’, at SCO summit in Tianjin

Accusing India of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine, Trump demanded that India immediately stop buying Russian oil, threatening India with tariffs that would 'make your head spin'. External affairs minister S. Jaishankar’s strange statement that India had been persuaded to purchase Russian oil by the Americans is, however, yet to be explained by either side.

By the time PM Modi flew into Tianjin to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit on 31 August, Americans were baying about betrayal by India. Peter Navarro, a White House advisor close to Trump, warned against India getting into bed with China. If India wanted to be treated like a strategic partner of India, it had to act like one, he said on TV.

Navarro also went on to describe the war in Ukraine as ‘India’s Ukraine War’ and accused India of acting like a laundromat for Kremlin, an accusation that the MEA refuted as false and misleading on 5 September.  Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman also doubled down and reiterated India’s stand and told TV channel Network 18, “We will continue [to buy Russian oil]. It’s been made clear. We will take a call on what suits us best. Whether its Russian oil or anything else, it’s our decision which suits our needs."

It is no longer a lovers’ quarrel. Geopolitical conditions have changed. India quietly signed the Tianjin Declaration that condemned the genocide in Gaza and the unilateral attacks on Iran by Israel and the US. The warmth that Putin put on while greeting Modi for the photo-ops — after all, Russia is now India’s principal supplier of oil — was remarkable and so was their much-publicised 40-minute talk in Putin's limousine protected from spyware and listening devices.

While the SCO took a firm turn towards multipolarity and announced a new Development Bank — SCO already has one — for member countries, alarm bells rang in Washington DC.   

It is difficult to predict what the erratic US president may do next. His options are limited and while Indian IT-enabled services seem to be safe, one can never tell what a volatile Donald Trump may do.