When President Trump announced steep tariffs on India in the summer of 2025, the move was framed as a show of strength meant to force New Delhi into economic concessions and curtail its purchases of discounted Russian oil. Instead, the decision proved to be one of the most counterproductive episodes in recent U.S.–India relations, pushing the world’s largest democracy closer into Moscow’s orbit at a time when Washington’s broader Indo-Pacific strategy relied heavily on partnership with India.
The tariffs began as a 25 percent levy on Indian imports, justified as a measure to protect American agriculture and manufacturing. But the escalation came quickly and sharply. Within days, Trump signed an executive order doubling the tariff to 50 percent, explicitly tying the punishment to India’s refusal to halt purchases of Russian crude and military equipment. No other major U.S. partner had faced such severe penalties, and the move was seen in New Delhi as a targeted humiliation. India’s Ministry of External Affairs condemned the action as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” stressing that its energy security decisions were guided by necessity, not politics. Officials noted bitterly that the U.S. itself continued to engage in global energy transactions while demanding that India bear the cost of Washington’s geopolitical disputes.
Rather than weakening India’s resolve, the tariffs strengthened its ties with Moscow. Russia swiftly moved to seize the opportunity, offering expanded energy deals, joint projects in the Arctic and Far East, and payment mechanisms denominated in rupees to circumvent Western sanctions. Russian officials made a point of reassuring India that its oil supply would remain stable and shielded from U.S. financial pressure. This overture was not merely symbolic. It highlighted the widening space for cooperation between the two countries, reinforcing India’s longstanding reliance on Russian defense systems and energy infrastructure.
The tariffs also reverberated at the grassroots level of India’s economy. In Kolkata, leather exporters openly discussed labeling their goods as “Made in Europe” to sidestep the crippling duties—a telling illustration of how policy decisions in Washington disrupted livelihoods half a world away. For small and medium businesses in India’s export sector, the message was clear: the U.S. could no longer be trusted as a stable trading partner, and diversification toward Europe, the Middle East, and Russia became an economic imperative.
Strategically, the tariffs undermined decades of bipartisan U.S. outreach to India. Analysts such as Fareed Zakaria characterized the decision as a dire miscalculation that reversed Washington’s pivot to Asia. Instead of bolstering cooperation against shared concerns like China’s rise, the policy created friction, suspicion, and resentment. It undercut efforts to forge a durable alignment in the Indo-Pacific and left space for Russia—and potentially China—to draw India closer through forums like BRICS and trilateral talks.
India’s response has been twofold: diversification and defiance. While it continues trade negotiations with the EU and UK, it has simultaneously reaffirmed energy and strategic autonomy, resisting U.S. pressure while welcoming Russian overtures. For Moscow, the episode has been a diplomatic windfall, giving it renewed leverage in South Asia and proving that America’s coercive tools can alienate even its most important democratic allies.
What Trump envisioned as leverage became a self-inflicted wound. By weaponizing tariffs in pursuit of short-term political gain, Washington weakened its own Indo-Pacific strategy, strained a vital partnership, and inadvertently accelerated the very outcome it sought to prevent—India moving closer to Russia. The episode underscores a broader truth about coercive economic statecraft: pressure without partnership rarely bends allies to one’s will; it more often drives them into the arms of others who offer respect, stability, and opportunity.