The public sentiment is predominantly negative towards Trump's trade policies, reflecting widespread concern over his tariffs and perceived disrespect towards India. Commenters express frustration over his lack of understanding of trade dynamics and criticize his approach as detrimental to US-India relations. Many highlight India's resilience and independence in the face of US pressures, underscoring a strong sentiment of discontent and skepticism.

Trump Administration

Government of India

What products does this smooth brain moron want Indians to buy from us

s_nes

Immediately after he does an about face on China and allows 600,000 Chinese students to come to the US. Definitely an unrelated coincidence and nothing else.

FrodoCraggins

It is all about Global South and shifting power, India is not alone, hell China, Russia, Brazil and India make up half of the world population. Not just economic power, India is not budging neither is China or Russia, not even Brazil, Iran or NK.   

This is not a message to Trump, it is to the Greater West meaning U.S. and most of the EU. This was going to happen sooner or later, Trump expedited the decline. Time to do a Trump 360.

PsychLegalMind

Trump is the stupidest person at the world stage, chosen by the dumbest. Americans may have to live with this POS other countries don't have to. All countries, including long term US allies are pissed and they are moving on. Supply chains are moving away and so is the US influence. Years of hegemony down the drain in a few short months. Year 2025 and Trump are going to be remembered as the pivotal point in the history when the US went from being a Super Power to a regional power.

vanhype

KCMODEE

Really I don’t believe it unless it’s his normal insane ramblings in front of LIVE REPORTERS!

BeardedMan32

NefariousnessOne7335

Adam18290

Im not sure what's worse, how clueless this guy is or how the nut huggers cheer him on.

KGKSHRLR33

The most insane thing here is that Indians are the biggest supporter of Israel in the world, of which this administration is a huge fan as everyone knows. You would think they would want to preserve good relations with India purely because of that point.

Lucker_Noob

Undoing decades of diplomatic work because of his fragile ego and desperate need for attention and flattery. 

SavagePlatypus76

I bet Trump’s having a hissy fit because world leaders are meeting and he’s not invited.

Puzzleheaded_Ad_3507

You know what'd be cool? Tariffs on services. Why are Americans companies outsourcing millions of jobs to India? Impose tariffs (paid by American companies to the US govt) and bring back to those jobs back to America. This is what he ran on. Do it. This is cause more unemployment in India so he gets two wishes simultaneously 

satnam14

The unraveling of a seemingly positive trade dynamic shows the precarious nature of crafting an economic partnership with a mercurial Trump administration. India appeared on the fast track to a trade deal. An early White House visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to months of negotiations. By July, the Indians believed they had struck an agreement and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer were simply waiting on President Donald Trump’s approval.

strategicpublish

No new information in the article.

“He is upset” - you don’t say…. A lot of Indians are upset too.

omnivision12345

Imagine that in a few decades people will be discussing how a rapist manchild felon became president of US, because Republican voters wanted Democrats to get rekt.

Of course he is upset, someone didn't kiss his ass enough so he tries to punish them by scraping any deal and destroying diplomatic relations. He doesn't care about short or long term implications of this, if he can even fathom them.

Cheerful_Champion

Poor Trumpanzee is such a big pedo snowflake because Modi refused to him a “Nobel Pedo Prize” photo op with Pakistan’s military dictator who is a professional ass kisser.

CampEmbarrassed170

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I thought he was going to end the Russia/Ukraine war before his Inauguration or on Day 1 at the latest. What happened?

borbor8

I suspect most Americans don't care enough about India to really appreciate the significance of these developments, or worse, are hostile towards it for various reasons(immigration, H1Bs, outsourcing, Hindu nationalist government and so on, backed up by underlying racial and cultural prejudices) but Modi just announced his first foreign visit to China in 7 years and sent his NSA to Russia. Donald Trump may just end up turning BRICS from a paper alliance that never really went past empty statements(because of India and China's mutual distrust and India/Brazil's unwillingness to be hostile to the USA) to a real long-term geopolitical problem for the United States; a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Before these announcements, India had actually unilaterally cut Russian crude imports and increased American oil imports, and offered $25 billion in investments for US oil in trade talks. Trump threw all that in their collective faces.

He's also made it politically difficult for pro-US voices in Indian politics, who've had to work hard over the last 20 years to overcome 50 years of accumulated distrust from Indian politicians and society of America that they inherited from the Cold War. This will poison the well for diplomacy with a future Democratic administration.

1-randomonium

invalidpassword

Highly doubt he'll do anything about H1Bs even though that's one area he probably could actually get more people on his side considering the state of the job market.

Yurilla

One of the steps in being in an abusive relationship is isolation from friends. 

Right along with gaslighting, financial manipulation, and refusing to take responsibility.

Sigh.

archblade7777

TheReluctantSojourn

They are now ignoring us and partnering with Russia.

YgramulTheMany

No, India tanked the relations when they backed Russia's genocidal war against Ukraine. Trump is - for once and likely accidentally - doing something useful after having realized that Ukraine won't roll over and die like he had hoped.

potato_in_an_ass

China will be happy. However, India will be very forgiving because they need USA

EmployAltruistic647

CommercialRemote3325

The India-US relationship is officially over, and it will not recover even after the end of Trump's presidency.

ReductionGear

Cashing in something that wasn't his to sell.

DarrenEdwards

Rapidly accelerating a Russia-China-India economic and armament coalition. WWIII here we come.

GreatRent8008

Trump is playing international relations as if the US were a boyfriend that any girl should be privileged to date.

eliota1

The earlier on was physically challenged;
This one is mentally challenged.

sandy01121989

Big deal.  He's already tanked the much longer and more important relations with Canada....and for absolutely no good reason.

MJcorrieviewer

I don’t think the USA-India relationship was that strong compared to the Soviet( now Russia) India friendship. America works for its interests so does India.

Dipankar94

If they are helping Russia with the war in Ukraine, then they deserve that their relations ruined because it’s unacceptable.

____dude_

Inda is closer to Russia than America, buy Russian oil, knowingly bought grain from Russia that was stolen from Ukraine at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sells computer chips and other parts used in Russian drones and other military equipment. But trump wants US computer chips made in India that’s a national security threat. Trump wants something from India most likely a better deal getting his cell phone being made there. But trump has destroyed hundreds of years of great relationships and respect for America’s closest allies including Canada, UK , Greenland, Mexico and even US territories including Puerto Rico that he didn’t even know was a US territory or an island.

CAM6913

Good on him not a Trump fan at all but i am glad he has done this. You cannot buy Russian oil and pretend to be a decent country.

Conscious_Scheme132

There are two things going on here at the same time: 

**1).)** U.S. is looking for an excuse to renegotiate trade with India. Both sides have been trying to negotiate a trade deal for quite some time, but there are huge issues: India will not sell out its agricultural base and the U.S. can’t really put tariffs on digital services from India the way it can physical imports from other nations. This makes India extremely difficult to negotiate with but at the same time, extremely important for America to strike a deal with before India erodes America’s white collar base without giving reciprocal access to its consumer market. You simply can’t put tariffs on your IT guy in Bangalore the way you can car parts from Germany because no physical good is crossing a physical border.

What’s happening now is that the gloves are coming off: America is trying to play hardball and express displeasure with India. The problem is that India is just in the flat out superior negotiating position. America may have a technology edge but this is being eroded and India is trending towards further expansion economically and in terms of human capital. Withholding technological transfer to India will not work, because the technological gatekeeping the U.S. used in the past is already being eroded by China. If the U.S. continues then it opens up the U.S. to IP/technological theft not just from China but India as well, which will be fatal to U.S. domestic industry. 

The U.S. should have renegotiated trade deals with China and India after the 2008 financial crisis but both the Chinese and the Indians were too effective at stalling the negotiations to the point that now they have the upper hand. Now they are trying to make up for lost time and doing too much from too weak of a bargaining position. 

**2.)** The bigger issue is that the recent India - Pakistan conflict exposed America’s position. During the conflict Pakistan could reliably count on diplomatic support from Turkey, China, **and America**. India received no support at all from the Quad during this conflict. The IMF even financially bailed Pakistan out during the conflict and Trump/Vance attempted to mediate on behalf of Pakistan while equivocating the two sides internationally. For India, this was a massive red line. 

Subsequently, Trump invited General Asif Munir (ie not Pakistan’s PM) to the White House to negotiate using Pakistani airspace to bomb Iran. This demonstrated to India that the U.S. simply will never give up Pakistan. 

So now India in a position where it sees that the U.S. is not only unreliable diplomatically but that it will always prioritize relations with its mortal enemy *and* that will try to impede India’s technological development further. 

I’d argue that all of this was very predictable.

CoachKoranGodwin

He already tanked the relation with India. 
Even if he backtracks tomorrow, which we all doubt, there is no guarantee that he wouldn’t change his mood again the day after. 
And even if he is out of office we now all have seen, that Americans could vote another lunatic into office anytime. 
Trump is the beginning of the end of US dominance. We, the world, should thank him for this.

mastermindman99

An entire new generation of Indians, born from the late 90s to 2000s will now learn &amp; internalize why their previous generations took a cautious distrustful approach with the US. Sigh. This is penny wise pound foolish move by Trump.

PersonNPlusOne

Thing is, India never relied on US. So title is kinda...you know..

JustGulabjamun

I’ll agree about the bizzare nice treatment of Pakistan and China  but the stuff about secondary sanctions over Russian oil is pretty classic American stuff and viewed from a Rus/Ukr view instead of a south Asian foreign policy one makes a lot of sense.

spinosaurs70

What I don’t quite understand is why the U.S. deep state appears to be giving Trump so much leeway.

The strategic direction of a nation is shaped over years—often decades—not in reaction to short-term political shifts.

Trump now seems singularly focused on forcing Russia to end the war. But even if that happens in the next couple of months, the underlying damage to U.S. alliances and trust is already done. The relationship with key partners is strained, perhaps irreparably.

So what exactly is the endgame here?

curiousstrider

Henry Kissinger said \`It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend, is fatal. To understand what being America's friend meant to Afghans, an Afghan army officer shared his personal story for my blog. A story on fighting the Taliban, to the heart wrenching time he was abandoned, as Kabul fell. My article also features a first person account from a student in Kabul, on life under the old US ally, the Taliban.  
  
[https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2025/07/fighting-taliban-and-betrayal-afghan.html](https://rpdeans.blogspot.com/2025/07/fighting-taliban-and-betrayal-afghan.html)

Dean_46

I’m not sure there’s much I can add here that hasn’t been said already. It’s a huge mistake for the US to antagonise both India and Brazil at the same time, especially since it’s for idiotic reasons in the first place. 

The best way to get both nations to limit their trade with Russia is to offer them long term stable commitments that help improve them. India has a population of well over 1.4 billion and one that is still growing. 

The other way to get those countries to limit their trade with Russia is to let them see that Russia is an unreliable partner and one that isn’t capable of offering much. That’s something they need to experience on their own terms and not be subject to threats of sanctions or tariffs. 

Biden had a much better grasp of geopolitics.

Ethereal-Zenith

If India genuinely does employ a pragmatic and transactional approach to relations with major powers beyond its region then surely a few ripples in US bilateral affairs can be managed easily 

The Indian logic of buying Russian oil is it is simply pursuing its interests. ‘We do balancing, it’s the cheapest option and our economy takes precedence, Ukraine is not our fight’. Fair enough.

The US logic is it is simply pursuing its own interests. ‘We have an opportunity to humble Russia and protect Ukraine, India’s support of Russia enables them and imposes costs on the US in terms of military aid and posture’. Fair enough. If Russia can be stopped the US can get troops out of Europe quicker.

Strong_Remove_2976

Just 25? Go to the back of queue. They ripped 80+ years of relationship with us.

Jazzlike_770

Why did you reelect Trump, my American friends? But on a more serious note I think that indian people and the American people are very much aligned - far more stable than earlier. I don't think that the president can spoil this much.

houstonrice

That's someone's plan, no doubt. Or the plan of a number of state actors. Or both, either way.

DanoPinyon

trump is risks thanking every countries relation

Legitimate-Proof5152

Consider it tanked. 

The Indian-US rapprochement of the last few years bucked a decades long trend of misalignment and disconnect. Trump’s erratic behavior now basically confirms some of the long held fears and prejudices in India regarding Western interests and influence.

Trump really is a bull in a China Shop

Open_Management7430

I would broadly agree with the OP except that Trump has caused a rift with almost everyone. He as antagonised the closest US allies. He has got BRICS to be more relevant and serious discuss reducing their reliance on the dollar and Europe to start thinking of being more independent of the US. This will get India to explore more areas of cooperation with both China and Russia.

There is way too much doomerism wrt India-US in this publication as well as on Foreign Policy, on Stimson Centre and a bunch of others. Mostly because the majority of Indian readers are likely to click on this type of content. Indians are paranoid that they will not become a developed country.

From my perspective it’s good to have such articles. Because as a great man once said - Only the Paranoid Survive.

noobflounder

This provides a brutally realist view of how bad the relationship is and how limited India's future options are. Not very pleasant reading for any Indian or any proponent of the US-India relationship, or even the India-Russia relationship.

&gt;Trump’s return to the White House has complicated each of the assumptions New Delhi held. **Instead of girding itself for great-power competition, the White House is scouring the world for short-term gains. Through that lens, Washington has much more to gain from China than it does from India; the war in Ukraine must end because supporting Ukraine is not worth American taxpayers’ money; and Europe’s problems with Russia are Europe’s problems, not those of the United States.** In such a worldview, India’s geopolitical profile invariably shrinks.

&gt;...

&gt;Washington’s revised approach to great-power competition has not only transformed its own policy toward New Delhi but has also influenced the choices and decisions of other major players—with significant implications for India. **Russia, for instance, has sensed that Trump is far less committed to supporting Ukraine than was Biden, is less interested in the systemic challenge posed by China to the U.S.-led world order, and is reluctant to provide security commitments to allies in Europe and Asia.** As Trump prepares for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin this week, he seeks to punish India for buying Russian oil—a policy that the United States previously encouraged. With Trump in the White House, Russia has more options and needs India less.

&gt;...

&gt;Indeed, Moscow feels a diminishing obligation to New Delhi and is unwilling to offer more support than it receives, which explains its lukewarm backing during India’s clash with Pakistan in May. Russia’s public statements at the time were vague: they neither mentioned Pakistan by name nor endorsed India’s military reprisals, but simply called for settling disagreements diplomatically. In a sense, Russia echoed India’s own messaging after the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the statements alarmed New Delhi’s Russia watchers, who expected the Kremlin to stand by India, condemn Pakistan, and affirm India’s right to retaliate—much as Israel did in its full-throated support for India. Indian analysts suspect that Russia refrained from doing so because it didn’t want to irritate China, which has become a close strategic partner of Pakistan and provided it with a great deal of new weaponry.

&gt;**Going forward, Russia is likely to prioritize closer ties with China over its declining relationship with India. Sensing victory in Ukraine, Moscow has new priorities: it now seeks partners capable and willing to challenge the United States and Europe, not merely offering commercial relationships.** China can do that, but India is only interested in trade. Russia may therefore be reluctant to support India in any future Indian-Pakistani conflict, owing to China’s ties with Pakistan. If Russian support for India is doubtful during a conflict with Pakistan, it’s safe to assume that Russia will do little to help India in any future conflict with China.

It's also not pleasant reading for anyone who is worried about the long-term fate of the current US-dominated world order.

&gt;**Trump seeks deals with China and Russia, browbeats traditional allies and friends, and seems content to speed the emergence of some kind of G-2 condominium in which the United States and China carve up the world between them.** In such a world, India’s geopolitical importance declines dramatically.

&gt;This is not just India’s plight. The story in Europe and among American treaty allies in Asia is similar. In that shared doubt about the United States, however, lies a potential salve for India’s injured foreign policy. India could strengthen partnerships with European countries and major Asian powers, such as Japan and South Korea, who face their own balancing dilemmas because of the unreliability of the Trump administration.

A pretty good objective summary.

A transactional US meets with the world. Everybody for themselves. Which isn't a bad thing in the long run: it will just get more volatile.

SubstantialSquash3

India, with the highest tariff rate in Asia, will still be the fastest growing major economy. These massive tariffs will have a paltry affect of hitting growth rates by about 0.2-0.3%. India is also a consumption-driven economy. This explains why such worthless agenda pieces keep sprouting up.

&gt; And yet, paradoxically, India’s response to its current predicament is likely to be, well, more of the same.

Because its the correct path.

Old-Machine-8000

Good article but we are reading too much into it. 

Trump operates like a king in a courtroom. He is tackling the 3 courtiers one by one, punishes India to signal to Russia that he means business when it comes to making peace deal and sends a warning to China that it’s next if peace deal is not reached. In turn both China and India now need to push Russia to make peace else they will suffer.

Empty-Pumpkin7618

US-India trade dynamics are under scrutiny as President Trump defends tariffs and sanctions concerning oil purchases from Russia, highlighting international trade tensions.

US-India Trade Relations and Trump Administration Policies

Why This Matters

Public Sentiment Summary

Highlighted Comments

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What the people want