NEW DELHI – With the relationship between the United States and India at its lowest point in decades, Washington’s inflammatory language toward New Delhi is deepening the crisis, according to people familiar with the matter, and complicating efforts to repair ties.
Peter Navarro, one of President Donald Trump’s longest-serving and most trusted advisers, has gone on the attack, making increasingly charged statements about India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Russia’s conflict with Ukraine is “Modi’s war,” Navarro told Bloomberg News last Wednesday; New Delhi has become a “laundromat for the Kremlin,” he said the next day on X, allowing it to evade Western oil sanctions; on Sunday, he went on Fox News and said Indian “Brahmins are profiteering” from the conflict, an apparent reference to a Hindu caste.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, meanwhile, have attempted to resolve the diplomatic standoff with New Delhi. Rubio and Greer went to the Oval Office recently to present Trump with a proposed Indian trade deal, but the president rejected it, according to three people familiar with the matter, speaking to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political discussions.
One of the people familiar said the centerpiece of the proposal was an Indian offer to significantly reduce its tariffs on U.S. goods, which would represent a major concession from New Delhi in the countries’ long-running trade dispute. Trump, however, has declined to approve trade deal options unless India commits to scaling back its purchases of Russian oil, two of the people familiar said.
“India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the U.S.,” Trump said Monday on Truth Social. “They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late,” he added, referring to the U.S.-India economic relationship as “a totally one sided disaster!”
In a statement to The Post, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said, “President Trump and Prime Minister Modi have a respectful relationship, and teams from both the United States and India remain in close communication on the full range of diplomatic, defense and commercial priorities in our strategic partnership.”
“India must do more to sufficiently address U.S. [trade] concerns,” the State Department press office said in a statement, adding that “this administration is working as one team to protect American workers and secure U.S. interests.”
Navarro and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative did not respond to a request for comment.
The escalating rhetoric from the president and his senior economic adviser has led to deepening anger and confusion in India, where businesses are already straining under the weight of U.S. tariffs, which Trump ratcheted up to 50 percent last month to punish the country for buying oil from Moscow. Navarro’s attacks in particular could trigger an increase in anti-American sentiment in India, former U.S. and Indian officials and political analysts warned, with potentially lasting consequences.
“This is not a situation which the current decision-makers in India are used to,” said Pankaj Saran, India’s former deputy national security adviser. “It’s going to have a cost.”
Modi, who spent years cultivating personal ties with Trump and highlighting the overlap in their nationalist agendas, has responded to the falling-out by courting the United States’ main geopolitical rivals. In China this week for the first time in seven years to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, Modi was seen smiling with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and hugging Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When Modi and Xi met on the sidelines, “they reaffirmed that the two countries were development partners and not rivals,” according to a readout from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). “Their relations should not be seen through a third country lens,” the statement added, in what seemed a clear nod to how the summit would be viewed in Washington.
At home, Modi has adopted a posture of defiance. The day after Trump announced the increased tariffs, Modi said he was willing “to pay a heavy price” for not accepting a U.S. trade deal that would hurt farmers, dairy workers and fishermen, who together make up a majority of the Indian workforce. On the country’s Independence Day, Modi emphasized national self-reliance: “It is a great misfortune when dependency becomes a habit,” he said.
Modi’s office and the MEA did not respond to a request for comment.
While Trump has long criticized India’s heavily protected economy, tensions with Modi reached new heights this spring after a short-lived military confrontation between India and Pakistan. Trump has repeatedly claimed credit for brokering a ceasefire between the two nuclear archrivals – an affront to India, which maintains that all issues with Pakistan are handled bilaterally.
The extent of U.S. involvement in the ceasefire negotiations remains unclear. But Modi’s refusal to acknowledge any role by Trump, who has publicly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, has irritated the White House, according to analysts and former U.S. and Indian officials.
“Due to his focus on peace, President Trump was able to successfully broker a ceasefire in the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan in May,” Kelly, the White House spokeswoman, said in her statement to The Post.
As trade talks stalled, Navarro emerged as the administration’s most strident critic of India. He called the country the “maharaja of tariffs” and said its purchases of Russian oil were prolonging the war in Ukraine. “If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the U.S., it needs to start acting like one,” he wrote Aug. 18 in the Financial Times.
The adviser’s criticisms have “really rubbed New Delhi the wrong way,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for South Asia at Chatham House, adding it could push New Delhi to reduce cooperation with Washington in key areas such as defense.
A U.S. official with knowledge of the situation, speaking to The Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues, said there is a recognition within the administration that Navarro’s comments are “unhelpful” but that he is “not actually involved” in negotiations with India.
The State Department has been tasked with trying to stabilize the relationship, two of the people familiar with the matter said, but the extent of its influence was unclear. On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in India posted on X that the “partnership between the United States and India continues to reach new heights – a defining relationship of the 21st century,” a message that drew immediate scorn from experts and politicians.
“Seems out of touch with reality,” wrote Derek Grossman, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.
Sujeet Kumar, a member of Parliament from Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, was more blunt: “On the one hand, you talk of our enduring friendship; on the other hand, officials in DC are speaking filthy almost daily,” he said on X.
By focusing on India’s Russian oil purchases, analysts said, the White House had chosen an especially thorny issue, one complicated by history and the intricacies of global trade.
India became a major purchaser of oil from Moscow only after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, lured by discounted prices – and spurred on by Western allies keen to stabilize world energy prices. Russian oil “is going to be selling at bargain prices, and we’re happy to have India get that bargain,” then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in November 2022.
Since 2023, India has been the top buyer of Russian seaborne crude, according to the ship-data-tracking firm Kpler. The discounted oil has created a windfall for Indian refiners, especially Reliance Industries, the conglomerate owned by Asia’s richest man and Modi ally, Mukesh Ambani, which has earned almost $6 billion in extra profits, the Financial Times reported last month.
India buys oil from Russia “because they receive a huge discount,” said Petras Katinas, an energy analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “You cannot fully solve this issue.”
The Trump administration is “treating Russian oil and trade as two separate issues,” the U.S. official said, “but obviously there’s goodwill involved here, and [India’s] continued purchases of Russian oil isn’t helping.”
New Delhi has given no public indication that it plans to reduce its Russian oil purchases. Hardeep Singh Puri, the country’s oil minister, wrote in the Hindu newspaper this week that “India has not broken rules” and has “kept global prices from spiraling.”
In August, Katinas noted, India bought 24 percent less Russian oil than it had the previous month, and increased its oil imports from the United States by 129 percent compared with July. But he cautioned it was “too early” to draw any firm conclusions.
In the meantime, anti-American sentiment is growing in India. Ramdev, a celebrity yoga entrepreneur and prominent Modi backer, called last week for Indian citizens to boycott American brands in response to Trump’s 50 percent tariffs.
“Not a single Indian should be seen at the counters of Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Subway, KFC or McDonald’s,” he said. “If this happens, chaos will ensue in America.”
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