1 September 2025- Concern has recently become evident among US officials and analysts about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s growing closeness with Russia and China. The strongest criticism has come from White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has accused New Delhi of indirectly supporting Moscow’s war efforts through its massive oil purchases. The discussion became even more heated when Modi held important meetings with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping during the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin. This was Modi’s visit to China after seven years.
Navarro’s sharp statements became a topic of discussion. He raised the issue several times in public forums, especially on Fox News. In one statement, he unusually referred to India’s caste system and defended the 50 percent tariff imposed by the Trump administration on Indian goods, saying, “You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people”. He even called India “a laundromat for the Kremlin”. According to him, Indian refiners are buying cheap Russian crude oil, processing it and then selling it at high prices in the markets of Europe, Africa and Asia.
At the same time, he also made contradictory statements. On the one hand, he called Modi “a great leader”, while on the other hand he raised the question that why “the biggest democracy in the world” is going “into bed with Putin and Xi Jinping”. He also underlined that India’s Russian oil imports were negligible before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but since then it has increased drastically.
The US media also presented this entire incident from different perspectives. TIME indicated that Trump’s tariff policy has inadvertently brought Modi closer to Beijing. Also, the SCO summit took place at a time when Washington is grappling with trade disputes with both its allies and opponents. CNN emphasised the political signals of Modi’s visit, calling it his first visit to China since 2018, and said it was a kind of reluctant easing of long-standing tensions after the 2020 border clashes. The New York Times, on the other hand, termed Trump’s 50 percent tariffs as “economic war” and highlighted the disruptions in supply chains and the anger of American companies that had invested heavily in India as an alternative to China.
The criticism was not limited to the media. Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan warned that Trump’s aggressive trade policy could jeopardise years of diplomatic hard work. He said in a podcast, “When I go to these places now and I talk to leaders, they are talking about derisking from the United States.” According to him, America, which was once considered the most trusted partner, is now gradually being seen as unpredictable. Citing the example of India, he said, “Here’s a country we were trying to build a deeper and more sustainable relationship with. Now you’ve got President Trump launching a massive trade offensive, and the Indians are saying, ‘Well, I guess maybe we have to go show up in Beijing.’”
For Prime Minister Modi, the SCO meetings were an opportunity to showcase India’s “strategic autonomy”. By interacting with both Putin and Xi, he sent a message that India will chart its own course, no matter how much pressure there is from Washington. He even said that India and China should not view their relationship “through a third country lens” — an indirect allusion to US expectations.
Policy experts at the Atlantic Council have issued a stern warning that the Trump administration’s stance could undermine decades of bipartisan efforts aimed at establishing India as a balancing power against China. Some Democrats even accused Trump of damaging a fragile partnership for short-term political gain and said it had no bearing on the Russia-Ukraine war.
The whole episode points to a deeper rift. If the current situation remains the same, India may move towards a working partnership with Russia and China for practical reasons. This prospect is making American strategists, who once considered New Delhi a key pillar of their Asia policy, uncomfortable. Now it remains to be seen whether the relationship can be stabilized or whether this tension will take the form of a new global equation.
