That this is not a good week for India-US relations is an understatement. With 25% tariffs, threat of a “penalty” for purchasing oil and military equipment from Russia, criticism for being a part of the Brics grouping, and sermons over an apparently “dead economy” and “obnoxious non-monetary trade barriers,” US President Donald Trump has made clear that India, who he still calls a “friend”, is high on his imagination. His irritation might even be personal. It’s difficult to say. The conclusion of what appears to be a last-minute trade agreement with Pakistan, still with 19% tariffs, and a plan — the details of which are best known to the President — to develop untapped and “massive oil reserves” within Pakistan is striking, if not mystifying to global oil experts.

Understandably, within India, anger has dimmed the vision for promise in a relationship that has transformed in the past two decades. Well known television anchors have selflessly advised the government to “draw a line” because, apparently, “Trump always chickens-out”. Given that the Indian Parliament is in session, news channels have one sound bite after another on this crucial relationship, the state of the Indian economy, and much else.

Friends in Washington D.C. who have spent a lifetime building trust between the two countries are appalled. “What is lost,” argues Evan Feigenbaum, a former US official who played a key role in getting the US-India civil nuclear agreement across the line, “is trust that took 25 years of painstaking, hard, bipartisan work and a huge lift by advocates in both countries”. Trust, the........

© hindustantimes