The India-US trade relationship has never been easy and has occasionally even been hostile. From aid to estrangement, from sanctions to strategic partnership, it has been tempestuous and is currently somewhere between partnership and irritant. The trade agreement hangs in balance, and what has changed is not the asymmetry which has always been there, but the willingness to weaponise it openly — naturally, by the side that can.

The US currently is India’s largest export destination, accounting for roughly 18% of India’s merchandise exports. It is also the primary market for India’s information technology (IT) services. The Indian diaspora in America generates remittances exceeding $32 billion annually. American institutional investors hold significant positions in Indian equity markets. To use a 2008 financial contagion inspired metaphor, when the US sneezes, India reaches for the inhaler.

The reverse is not true. America’s exposure to India, while growing, remains manageable and is definitely not critical. This is the structural reality that entraps every conversation between the two countries.

What has changed materially over the better part of the last two and a half decades is the content of our trade with the US. India’s emergence as a global services force was not planned. It was a combination of historical accident and an earlier act of foresight. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s investment in the IITs in the 1950s was motivated by the idea of nation-building, not export strategy. The engineers and (computer) scientists those institutions delivered were meant for India. Many went to America instead, embedded themselves in technology, medicine and finance and created a diaspora presence that became the foundation of the bilateral relationship. By 2023, the Indian-American community was about 4.4 million, playing a disproportionate role in leadership of American political and economic institutions. Naturally, US corporations........

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