U.S. President Donald Trump is taking India to task, and we are a long way from what then-President Barack Obama called a "defining partnership of the 21st century."
But India’s neighbor, and enemy, and America’s frenemy, escaped Trump’s ire. Why?
Despite a successful visit to India by Vice-President J.D. Vance in April 2025, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the White House in February 2025, Trump hit India, America’s #12 trade partner, with two rounds of 25% tariffs. (Pakistan’s tariff of 19%, down from 29%, and is America’s #56 trade partner.)
The first round of tariffs is for India’s protectionist policies that shield its agriculture sector, the biggest employer in India, with almost 46% of the workforce. Trump then imposed an additional 25% tariff on India’s purchases of Russian oil. (Pakistan media claims the second tariff was retaliation for Modi’s refusal to credit Trump for mediating the May 2025 ceasefire between India and Pakistan, which may be true as no Indian leader wants to be seen acknowledging foreign mediation in Kashmir.)
India responded that Trump’s actions were "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable," and it has moved closer to its fellow BRICS members in turn.
India and the U.S. have historically been cordial but were never good friends. India was a leader in the Cold War Non- Aligned Movement and always steered an independent foreign policy course, but it was always close to Moscow and remains a major buyer of Russian arms.
After India’s founding, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was urged to “get on the democratic side immediately,” but he viewed America as a force of reaction and was determined India would not align with any other country or countries. Recently, India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar critically noted, “Nehru said we must be against the U.S. and a friend of China” and that India must shed “1946 romanticism.”
The minister’s advice may have come too late as Arnaud Bertrand noted about India and the Trump tariffs, “This is frankly a complete failure of India's "multi-alignment" diplomatic strategy: it was supposed to make India indispensable to all; instead it's made India dispensable to each…. That's the thing when you try to be friends with everyone: you risk becoming everyone's pressure valve, especially if you don't have the might to back up your positioning.”
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A relationship with the United States was a given from Pakistan’s founding: Pakistan’s founding leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah declared, "America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America. Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed, the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves." And Margaret Bourke-White noted about Pakistan’s expectations, “This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan’s own uncertain position as a new political entity.” (And tapping into the U.S. Treasury is a skill Pakistan has honed over the years.)
The U.S. and Pakistan cooperated during the Cold War. Pakistan joined U.S.-led anti-Soviet alliances like SEATO (1954) and CENTO (1955). Washington and Islamabad signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement in 1954, and Pakistan received military and economic aid.
Compared to India, Pakistan often helped the U.S., for example, hosting U-2 spy planes for missions against the Soviet Union, in the 1972 opening to China, facilitating the Afghan mujahideen insurgency against the Red Army from 1979 to 1989, and with the two-decade U.S. punitive expedition in Afghanistan.
Pakistan was the intermediary to approach China’s leaders about improving relations with the U.S., setting the stage for U.S. president Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking 1972 visit to Beijing. The U.S. highly valued Pakistan’s help and supported it during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, though it did not directly support Pakistan in the 1965 war with India.
In the 1980s, Pakistan controlled the distribution of U.S. weapons and money to the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen and America obliged by largely overlooking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. That ended when Pakistan tested a nuclear device in 1998 in response to India’s test explosions, but the sanctions were lifted after the 9-11 Al-Qaeda attacks when Washington realized it would need Pakistan’s help prosecuting its campaign in Afghanistan. (Pakistan never joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), but it did join the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1988.)
After the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, provided the U.S. with logistical support, intelligence cooperation, and access to military bases. Pakistan received billions in military and economic aid, but never severed its ties with the Taliban or the Haqqani Network, whom it regarded only as America’s enemies. Pakistan also hosted the Ground Lines of Communication for resupply of U.S. forces.
In 2011, the former U.S. Ambassador to India, Thomas Pickering, confessed that U.S. reliance on Pakistan was complete and channeled Jinnah when he declared, “We tend to need Pakistan more than Pakistan needs us. That's the current dilemma, because in many ways the United States is utterly dependent on Pakistan for logistical access to Afghanistan”
Pickering noted that though the U.S. was in Afghanistan partly to prevent destabilization in Pakistan, many Pakistanis viewed the U.S. struggle against the Afghan Taliban as a fight against their friends. Pakistan supported the founding of the Taliban as it was concerned with the “lawlessness and political instability” of Afghanistan, and so retooled its policy of supporting mujahideen clients to supporting the Taliban, according to Larry P. Goodson of the U.S. Army War College.
U.S.-Pakistan cooperation strained U.S. relations with India which was supporting the U.S. by sponsoring development projects and providing financial aid to the Kabul government which welcomed good relations with India.
Pakistan did not, according to Trump, escalate the fighting against India in the May 2025 conflict that followed a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in April 2025 when 26 civilians were killed. In June 2025, Trump hosted Field Marshall Asim Munir, Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, at the White House to thank him. Pakistan reciprocated by nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
India may sulk and think Washington and Islamabad too friendly, but Pakistan had some grievances, such as being abandoned in the 1965 war with India, despite prior defense agreements; being sidelined after the Soviets were driven from Afghanistan, despite its key role in supporting U.S. objectives; and drone strikes and sovereignty violations that fueled anti-American sentiment and raised concerns about Pakistan’s autonomy, though the U.S. kindly didn’t publicly press Pakistan’s leaders about why al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden was found living quietly in Pakistan.
Economically, there will be more opportunities for profitable trade as soon as Modi and Trump resolve their differences, though U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is keeping up the pressure, threatening sanctions or secondary tariffs over India’s purchases of Russian oil. (Russian oil is about 42% of India’s oil imports.)
In response to Trump’s pressure, Modi met Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, spoke to the leaders of China and Russia, and agreed to attend the next meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Tianjin Summit 2025. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, visited New Delhi this week, and India’s external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Moscow and was received by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin briefed his BRICS allies following his meeting with Trump, and will visit India by the end of 2025. And a stronger BRICS may make it impossible for Trump to achieve his goal, per Andrew Korybko, of “derailing India’s rise as a great power.”
Trump’s pressure on India may unintentionally tighten the BRICS bloc he labels “anti-American.” In reality, BRICS tends to avoid U.S. dominance more than confront it. A stronger BRICS would bolster China and, by extension, Pakistan—an outcome New Delhi won’t welcome.
In July 2024, Pakistan secured a US$7 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to stabilize its economy and avert a default, and the country has demonstrated improved economic performance since then, but it is a long way from shedding its history of anemic growth, high inflation, poverty, low foreign exchange reserves, and high debt service. This was the 25th time Islamabad was rescued by the IMF, and China is likely hoping that both the IMF assistance and China’s Belt and Road Initiative US$64 billion infrastructure investment pays off, though the BRI has been plagued by attacks on China’s projects and citizens in Baluchistan.
Recently, Trump also announced a U.S.-Pakistan trade and energy pact that he claims could result in oil sales from Pakistan to India, though India will most likely reject the project. Recent tensions will also slow the stalled Turkmenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline as India won’t want Pakistan’s hand on the gas tap. In 2024, the U.S. killed the Iran-Pakistan natural gas pipeline, and Pakistan is now on the hook to Iran for an $18 billion penalty it can’t afford, so Washington can buy some goodwill by helping Islamabad discover and exploit domestic sources of energy to lower the country’s energy deficit, which has been a leading cause of instability.
New Delhi likely assumed it was immune to changes in U.S. policy, and maybe it was…until Donald Trump returned to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The U.S. and India have a healthy trade relationship and agreed to military cooperation in the anti-China Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, but Trump’s immediate priority is peace between Russia and Ukraine, and India’s purchases of Russian oil that fueled Moscow’s war effort were getting underfoot.
So, India is in a holding pattern as the U.S. punishes it for buying oil it needs and pauses further trade talks. The U.S. and India leaders may still make a deal and an opportunity is at the UN General Assembly meetings in September, though Modi will be loath to visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for a public dressing down. But Modi will be in a better position vis-à-vis Trump if he has the rest of BRICS behind him.
But China, the “senior partner” of BRICS, may not be the cash cow many Indians hope for. From early 2000 to early 2025, Chinese investment in India was just US$2.5 billion, 0.3 percent of total inflows. Investment is throttled by Indian laws to limit foreign direct investment by land border neighbors, and the ongoing border tensions, because of which all Chinese investments must be reviewed. Some Indians would probably want more Chinese investment, but Beijing will be careful that any investments don’t facilitate Washington’s drive to de-link the American and Chinese economies.
On the trade side, things can only be described as lopsided. In 2023, India had a trade deficit with China of almost US$107 billion, a rising trend since 2019. China shipped mostly electronics and other machinery, and India exported mostly less lucrative raw materials, including seafood.
Whereas India’s politics with the U.S. are technocratic with a dash of Nehru’s non-alignment, Trump’s personalized style is exactly what Pakistan’s military leaders excel at. Despite their grievances, Pakistan’s leaders don’t let pride get in the way of practical political necessity, though they have not shied away from expressing their understanding of America’s intentions: Admiral Mike Mullen, former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, Pakistan’s former Chief of Army Staff, more than 30 times in order to forge a trusted, working relationship, but Kayani still declared the "real aim of U.S. [war] strategy is to denuclearize Pakistan.”
But Mullen also spoke his mind when he testified to the U.S. Senate that the Haqqani Network, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, was “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency.”
America will not choose between India and Pakistan, and may or may not try to unhorse India. Washington and New Delhi have invested much in the trade relationship, especially in the technology sector, as the U.S. tries to minimize reliance on China. And as Pakistan is an ally of China and the Afghan Taliban, the U.S. will want to stay close to anticipate the looming change in South and Central Asia. Washington did not punish Pakistan’s leaders even for sheltering bin Laden, so relations will remain as-is because Pakistan excels at the regular U.S. need for the sharp-edged stuff, though it will always have its own side-hustle going on.
By James Durso