When Secretary of State Marco Rubio touched down in India last Saturday, he walked into a U.S.-India relationship fraying at the seams. The trip included cultural visits and high-level meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, as well as a meeting of Quad foreign ministers. The visit was designed to help repair U.S.-India ties, which Rubio himself has referred to as a “defining relationship of the 21st century.”
It’s a major repair job.
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The U.S.-India partnership has long been hailed as one of the world’s most important geopolitical alignments. These are two massive democracies and economies with a shared unease about China’s rise. On paper, that should mean all the ingredients are in place for a flourishing relationship. And indeed, New Delhi welcomed President Donald Trump’s return to office with gusto. But just months after Trump’s second inauguration, the relationship started going south. The Trump administration imposed harsh tariffs on New Delhi, which unfolded fast, hit hard, and surprised the Indian government. It started with a 26% “reciprocal” levy in April 2025, with Washington hiking duties on Indian goods up to 50% by August, citing India’s continued purchase of Russian oil. This resulted in a head-scratching outcome: India was supposed to be America’s democratic counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific region, but then briefly found itself with the highest tariff rate imposed on any U.S. trading partner, even facing a steeper rate than Beijing!
Compounding this controversy was a Trump visit to New Delhi that was floated, promised, and then ultimately never delivered. That left India scrambling to save its planned Quad Leaders’ Summit by downgrading it to a foreign ministers’ meeting. The Quad, which comprises the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, has now held its third consecutive meeting without a leader-level engagement. Add U.S. immigration crackdowns that have disproportionately hurt Indian workers, plus American diplomatic overtures toward Pakistan and China, and one gets the sense that Rubio was always going to be greeted by skepticism.
Some progress was made, however.
Rubio announced that India had committed to purchasing $500 billion in U.S. goods over the next five years, focusing on energy, technology, and agriculture. A bilateral Critical Minerals Framework was signed, meant to secure the supply, mining, and processing of critical minerals and rare earth elements. And at the Quad meeting, agreements were struck on a joint port project in Fiji, and an initiative on Indo-Pacific energy security and critical mineral supply chains. Rubio also suggested that a U.S.-India trade deal could be weeks (not months) away, with the next round of talks taking place in India in June. Trump even called the U.S. Embassy during a U.S. 250th anniversary party, with U.S. Ambassador Sergio Gor putting Trump on speakerphone so the massive audience could hear him praising Modi and U.S.-India ties. These developments matter.
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Still, the deeper anxieties plaguing the relationship remain unresolved. Jaishankar publicly pushed back on U.S. visa restrictions, warning that adverse effects on legal mobility would damage the very technology and research cooperation that Washington says it values. Rubio also faced journalist questions about Trump reposting a social media message referring to India and China as “hellhole” countries and accusing Indian immigrants of taking U.S. jobs.
There remains frustration in New Delhi that the excited momentum underlying the relationship has been lost. It will take more than a four-day visit to get things back on track. What’s important to watch are the weeks ahead, when trade negotiators sit down to finalize an interim trade agreement, and whether the commitments made on this trip translate into the leader-level engagement this partnership requires.
Rachel Rizzo is a senior fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.
