Just a few months ago, U.S.-India relations were on an upswing.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the White House in February 2025, the visit was a grand affair, full of pomp and circumstance. It also yielded tangible results, including a new understanding on defense cooperation between Washington and New Delhi, a shared commitment to expand bilateral trade, and the launch of a new partnership on artificial intelligence and advanced technology. The Indo-American partnership, in other words, seemed to be going strong.
But that was then, and this is now. Ties between Washington and New Delhi have deteriorated dramatically since, for both political and economic reasons.
President Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly taken credit for defusing the May 2025 military standoff between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region, contradicting India's insistence that there was no meaningful third-party mediation.
A further irritant has been the high-level diplomatic thaw that now appears to be underway between Washington and Islamabad. Since the start of the summer, President Trump has twice hosted Pakistan's Army Chief General Asim Munir at the White House, providing unprecedented political access to India's regional rival—and stoking fears in New Delhi that it could end up being eclipsed as America's preferred South Asian partner.
A serious trade dispute is also brewing. Back in July, the Trump administration imposed a 25 percent reciprocal tariff on Indian goods after economic talks between the two countries failed to make serious progress. Those were doubled last month, to 50 percent, over India's continued imports of Russian oil.
In response to all this, India is now tilting eastward—toward China. "A process of normalization of bilateral relations has taken off" between Beijing and New Delhi over the past few months, noted Shanthie Mariet D'Souza of the Mantraya Institute for Strategic Studies.
As part of that shift, the two countries have restarted high level contacts, mostly mended fences over their shared (and historically tense) border, and even begun to entertain the idea of an eventual strategic partnership. Most recently, at their August 31 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tianjin, China, the Chinese rolled out the red carpet for Modi in a clear bid to peel India away from America.
All this is sudden and concerning. Not all that long ago, Team Trump seemed to grasp the reasons why India mattered so much to American foreign policy.
India's location at the heart of the Indian Ocean, through which more than half of all maritime trade and most of China's oil imports pass, makes the country a key player in ensuring free regional trade. India is also the only regional nation with the population size, military capability, and economic potential to give a rising China a real run for its money, in economic and strategic terms. And India is the world's largest democracy, making it a natural partner for the United States in upholding the international rules-based order.
These features position India as a key counterweight to Chinese hegemony in Asia. That was captured in the Trump administration's 2017 National Security Strategy, which officially replaced "Asia-Pacific" with the term "Indo-Pacific." The same year, the White House revived the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, bringing together American, Indian, Japanese, and Australian officials in a strategic grouping aimed at counterbalancing China. The message was clear: Asia's democracies were prepared to band together to resist authoritarian influence. Now, however, the vibrancy of that bloc is in serious question as Indo-American ties cool.
The current chill isn't necessarily permanent. India is clearly hedging its political bets, and consistent with its long-running policy of "strategic autonomy," trying to use frictions with Washington to improve its bargaining position vis-à-vis Beijing. Still, the idea of a Sino-Indian realignment, something that was once a patently absurd notion, doesn't seem quite so crazy any longer.
The White House, meanwhile, appears to be banking on the idea that New Delhi will eventually fall in line with its preferences. Perhaps it will. But Chinese officials are clearly betting they can exploit the current tensions between India and the United States to their benefit, and neutralize New Delhi as a serious strategic challenger.
If they manage to do so, America will find its efforts to contain China, in Asia and beyond, much the worse for wear.
