From just reading social media feeds or watching television news in India, one would think that the U.S.-India relationship was in serious crisis. Donald Trump’s claiming credit for a “ceasefire” between India and Pakistan, Pakistan’s reported crypto deals with influential Americans, a U.S. Central Command statement of cooperation with Pakistan, and the expected visit of Pakistan’s Army Chief Asim Munir to the United States paint a picture of warming ties between Washington and Islamabad (or, at least, with Rawalpindi). At the same time, the Trump administration has declared a major trade truce with China after talks in London, while Trump himself has criticized Apple for attempting to shift assembly lines from China to India.
These facts are often presented devoid of context. Pakistan’s value for the United States certainly endures but remains diminished. Pakistan’s military and intelligence services have continued to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, as with the handing over of the Abbey Gate bomber in March, and they continue to enable overflight for U.S. military and intelligence drones. Pakistan also remains very much embedded in U.S. Central Command partnerships and the United States has continued concerns about nuclear safety in Pakistan. But these are balanced by other considerations. Pakistan’s economy remains in dire shape and it is no longer required by Washington for ground lines of communication to Afghanistan. For the first time, the U.S. has recently expressed serious concerns about Pakistan’s missile program. The diminished value of Pakistan for U.S. counterterrorism objectives is most significantly reflected in the sharp drop of U.S. military sales to Pakistan, notwithstanding continuing maintenance packages for F-16 aircraft. (The value of U.S. arms transfers to Pakistan between 2019 and 2025 is less than 1% that between 2000 and 2018.) By contrast, China’s support for Pakistan is far more extensive. It extends to material support in the form of aircraft and air-to-air missiles – Pakistan alone accounts for 63% of China’s defense exports – as well as sustained diplomatic support at the United Nations.
When it comes to U.S.-China relations, there remain questions about whether structural trade imbalances can be remedied. Truly addressing the trade deficit, a central agenda for the Trump administration, will require such deep structural reforms in China that they would imperil short-term growth and make China more vulnerable to adversarial economies, which is not something Xi Jinping desires. This means any trade ‘deal’ between the world’s two largest economies will be tactical, short-term, or limited in nature. A larger de-risking process remains well underway by both countries, and the only questions concern its scale, speed, and extent.
Meanwhile, despite very real bumps in the road concerning Pakistan and tariffs, the India-U.S. relationship is in fact humming along. Preparations are underway for implementing an ambitious technology partnership involving AI data centers, undersea cables, semiconductor and defense co-production, electronics assembly, and space cooperation. The energy relationship is also set to expand, and India has been a short-term beneficiary of both increased U.S. oil and gas production and U.S. reversals on AI chip export controls. U.S. defense platforms were employed during Operation Sindoor and – notwithstanding Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statements of May 10 – the U.S. both condemned the Pahalgam terrorist attack and supported India’s right to retaliate against terrorist facilities in Pakistan proper, a continued departure from its pre-2016 policy. Bilateral India-U.S. trade talks are proceeding apace, with the possibility of an agreement more wide-ranging in scope than any U.S. administration considered in the past with India.
Why then the sudden vibe shift in India when it comes to U.S. relations? Some of it has to do with amnesia on the part of commentators. The first Donald Trump term, for example, saw U.S. tariffs on Indian steel and aluminum exports, the suspension of Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) trading privileges for India, and the gutting of an immigration apparatus in a manner that disadvantaged Indian workers, students, and visitors. In July 2019, Trump also publicly offered to negotiate between India and Pakistan while sitting in the White House with then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, whom he praised lavishly. Trump and Xi also had a summit early in their first term in 2017 at Mar-a-Lago before their fragile understanding unraveled within a few months. These adverse developments from India’s perspective coexisted with an otherwise productive partnership between New Delhi and Washington that expanded when it came to security, energy, and technology during Trump’s first term. But many observers in India seem to have overlooked these precedents. In Trump’s second term, visceral anti-immigration sentiments among his base, pro-China business elites among his donors, and Trump’s personal desire for mediation could continue to complicate relations with India.
Similarly, an India-U.S. partnership that deepened visibly over the four years of Joe Biden’s administration – at the expense of Washington’s relations with China and Pakistan – was overshadowed in its last year by differences between New Delhi and Washington over relations with Canada and Bangladesh. This led to inflated expectations in some quarters in India that a Trump administration might be more sympathetic to Indian concerns, a development seemingly reinforced by a relatively successful bilateral meeting between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February this year.
Contradictions and differences in Indian and U.S. positions are natural, especially among broad-based partners that will never be uncritical allies. Indeed, we should expect more such irritants to emerge over the next four years. That does not derail the longer-term structural factors that define cooperation and competition among the primary actors. The deepening China-Pakistan nexus remains an important consideration and India and the United States continue to have shared concerns about China’s massive industrial oversupply and dumping, along with the resulting trade imbalances. Nonetheless, the sudden whiplash in public sentiment in some quarters in India is notable and will moderate the appetite in New Delhi for cooperation with Washington. Equally notable is that, beyond a point, the Trump administration may not care.
Dhruva Jaishankar is Executive Director at ORF America.