'Trump is likely being purposefully vague, hoping that this lack of clarity will pressure India, fearing the worst, to agree to scale back its imports of Russian oil.'
"It's hard to imagine any scenario under which India would reduce its oil trade with Russia, given its special relationship with Moscow, given how cheap Russian oil continues to be, and given how much its import bill could soar if it were to pivot away from Russian oil and focus on other, more expensive, oil from elsewhere," South Asia specialist Michael Kugelman tells Rediff's Archana Masih.
How will Trump's tariffs impact India's exports, especially in manufacturing?
Optimists in India may downplay the economic impacts, but these tariffs will hurt simply because the US is such an important destination for Indian exports.
Compounding matters for India is that many of its main export competitors, including Bangladesh and Pakistan -- both of which also send a majority of their exports to the US -- were hit with lower tariffs than was India.
All this said, India's economy is large and growing, and it has the capacity to be resilient.
One signpost to watch out for is what India does to compensate for what will become a more difficult US market.
Here, the fate of India's ongoing trade negotiations with the EU -- another top export market -- becomes all the more significant.
What will be the short term and long term consequences?
The short-term consequences will be most stark, because the tariffs will deliver an immediate blow to Indian industries that have long looked to US markets in a big way.
The long-term consequences are more unclear, as there are still many unknowns. Will the US and India eventually get a deal? It's certainly a possibility, even if takes some weeks or months.
Will India get its trade deal with the EU and secure the greater market access it needs to compensate for its losses in US markets?
And how will India's economic policies respond over the longer term, especially if there's no eventual deal with the US: Will it use this as an opportunity to focus more attention on increasing export diversification and prioritising the development of products that are good fits for attractive markets in the Middle East and less explored markets in the Global South?
How much higher is this tariff likely to be after the penalty Trump has spoken of?
That's unclear, and Trump is likely being purposefully vague, hoping that this lack of clarity will pressure India, fearing the worst, to agree to scale back its imports of Russian oil.
But it's hard to imagine any scenario under which India would reduce its oil trade with Russia, given its special relationship with Moscow, given how cheap Russian oil continues to be, and given how much its import bill could soar if it were to pivot away from Russian oil and focus on other, more expensive, oil from elsewhere.
Not to mention, doing so would amount to one concession too many, given everything else India has done in recent years: It has significantly reduced its oil imports from Venezuela and Iran following US pressure, even as it has ramped up its oil imports from the US.
Ultimately, this conundrum offers one more reason why India will hope the war in Ukraine ends sooner rather than later.
If the war ends, or even if the Russian and Ukrainians agree to begin talks, then Trump would presumably no longer be angry at Vladimir Putin for refusing to listen to Trump's peace entreaties, and therefore less likely to try to squeeze Putin by pressuring top Russian energy buyers like India to back away from Russian oil exports.
You tweeted that India was one of the first countries to start trade talks with the Trump administration and early tariff reductions. It's been increasing US goods imports and investing in US for years.
Trump calls India a friend. Yet India was hit with 25% tariffs? Why do you think Trump still did that?
I think it comes down to Trump's uncompromising, zero-sum, take-it-or-leave-it negotiating tactics.
He wanted more US access to markets across India, including those -- like agriculture and dairy -- where Indian negotiators have put their foot down and refused to ease protections.
It's worth remembering that early on in the talks, when there was a lot of optimism on both sides about prospects for a deal, US officials said that everything was on the table -- a comment that could be interpreted as a suggestion that the US wanted concessions across the board.
With India unwilling to ease protections in those politically important sectors, Trump was unwilling to make a deal that wouldn't have given him everything he sought.
There's also the issue of Trump reacting to Indian policies that he has long been very unhappy with and India hasn't changed -- such as its tariffs, which Trump has long singled out, and its imports of oil from Russia, which have started to bother Trump much more since his attempts to get peace talks going in Ukraine have been stymied due in part to Putin's intransigence.
We also can't rule out the possibility that this was personal for Trump: That he was upset with India for not letting him take credit for a role in the ceasefire with Pakistan, with Modi for giving detailed rejections of his various positions in a long call the two leaders had, or with India's government more broadly for not being sufficiently accommodating toward him.
How will this impact an already strained India-US relationship? How can the relationship be improved upon from here?
A trade deal would have been a confidence-building measure that injected some much-needed new momentum into a relationship that has been floundering since the end of the India-Pakistan conflict.
That there's no deal -- at least not yet -- will make it all the more difficult for the two sides to pick up the pieces after all that's happened over the last few months.
All this said, all is not lost.
First of all, there could still be a deal, though it's hard to imagine India being willing to make any more concessions, given all those it's already made.
Additionally, there could well be changes in the US policies that have upset India: For example, all this sudden movement in US-Pakistan ties could well slow down.
But the bigger issue at play is that the US-India relationship is, broadly speaking, a strong and sound partnership.
It has many pillars of cooperation that function on separate tracks and aren't necessarily impacted by problems in other areas.
It's telling, for example, that even amid the current crisis, the US and India achieved successes on space cooperation and counterterrorism.
Additionally, the relationship plays out on multiple channels -- government to government but also between the two private sectors and via the Indian-American diaspora.
I recently attended a high-level forum in New York with US and Indian business leaders, and there was a palpable sense of optimism and enthusiasm in the room -- even with government-to-government ties sputtering.
All this is to say that the relationship is resilient and has the capacity to bounce back -- especially if it leverages the goodwill and trust in areas that haven't been hit by the current malaise.
Is Trump harder on his allies than his adversaries?
It certainly seems that way. To be sure, he hasn't exactly been soft on Iran, and one can point to several other exceptions (Putin, who Trump has long suggested he has a soft spot for, has become a target of Trump's ire).
But on the whole, whether it's a function of tough love, or a desire to be a diplomatic disruptor, Trump does seem to reserve some of his harshest words and actions for top US allies and partners.
What this means for US relationships with its closest partners, including India, depends on a critical consideration: Will these relationships be held hostage to the whims of Trump, or can they fall back on the strong strategic convergences and institutional linkages that bind these partnerships together?
Public messaging from New Delhi of late suggests a willingness to leverage the latter in its relations with Washington.
What does the US deal with Pakistan about developing oil reserves actually mean and how will this impact India?
It's hard to tell at this point. A significant majority of Pakistan's probable reserves are not confirmed. In that sense, it would seem that a more impactful deal would focus on oil exploration, not on the development of reserves.
Trump administration officials might have been intrigued by Pakistani boasts of having made large oil and gas discoveries last year, and prompted to pursue a deal based on those claims.
What this deal does show is that the Trump administration -- contrary to most previous US administrations -- is keen to reframe its relationship with Pakistan so that it's more focused on commercial matters and less focused on security (though there is a small counterterrorism dimension to it now).
Crypto, critical minerals, trade and investment, and now energy appear to be the watchwords for this unexpected resurgence in US-Pakistan relations.
For India, the news could be worse: We're not seeing indications of a new US-Pakistan security alliance. But then again, with Pakistan's military so deeply involved in so many non-security sectors these days, anything the US does with Pakistan will be done with significant levels of involvement -- even if indirect -- from the Pakistani armed forces.
And that will likely not go down well in Delhi, especially so soon after the recent conflict with Pakistan.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff
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