The latest controversy surrounding President Donald Trump’s tariff policies has triggered deep alarm within the US-India strategic community, with former diplomats and diaspora leaders warning that two decades of painstakingly built partnership risk being dismantled in a matter of months. At the centre of this warning was an emergency conference call convened by Congressman Ro Khanna, co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus and an outspoken critic of Trump’s approach.
The call, which included former US Ambassadors to India, Rich Verma and Eric Garcetti, as well as venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and other prominent Indian-American business leaders, reflected growing concern that Trump’s decisions could reverse 25 years of bipartisan collaboration on issues spanning trade, clean energy, people-to-people ties, and defence cooperation.
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Participants described the moment as extraordinary, with Khanna emphasising that he would not have mobilised such high-level voices on short notice had the problem not represented a fundamental threat to the relationship.
Rich Verma, who served as US Ambassador to India under President Obama, offered the most striking assessment. He argued that in just two months of policy missteps, President Trump had undermined nearly a quarter century of progress that began with President Bill Clinton’s historic visit to New Delhi in 2000.
That visit had reoriented the United States’ approach away from viewing India exclusively through the prism of its conflict with Pakistan, embracing instead a “de-hyphenated” policy that built India up as a strategic partner in its own right.
Verma suggested that by inviting Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff to the Oval Office for the first time in American history, Trump had effectively reversed this de-hyphenation process, resurrecting Indian scepticism about Washington’s reliability. Trust—always the relationship’s most fragile and critical element—has taken the heaviest blow.
Verma lamented that Indian doubts about whether the US can act as a true, dependable partner have been validated by the administration’s actions.
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Eric Garcetti, until recently the US Ambassador to India, echoed and deepened these concerns. He pointed out that the current rift goes well beyond familiar tactical disputes over tariffs, trade talks, or market access. Instead, Garcetti characterised the Trump administration’s steps as structural, strategic blows to the partnership that will linger in the perceptions of Indian policymakers, the public, and the diaspora.
He warned that these are not disagreements that can be smoothed over quickly, stressing that when trust and strategic alignment are undermined, the damage resonates “on the street” in India in ways that may shape public opinion for years.
Garcetti’s remarks indicated that what is at stake is not a short-term diplomatic quarrel but the hard-earned bipartisan momentum in Washington that had consistently reinforced New Delhi’s value to US foreign policy.
Congressman Khanna’s organising of this emergency dialogue signaled congressional leadership’s alarm at the trajectory of the relationship. The India Caucus, long seen as one of the most bipartisan groupings on Capitol Hill, faces internal strain as Trump’s tariffs and diplomatic overtures to Pakistan fracture what had been a consensus-based approach to India.
Garcetti himself referenced his earlier cooperation with current National Security Advisor Mike Waltz when both were co-chairs of the India Caucus, underlining the point that India policy has historically withstood partisan divides. That this bipartisan foundation now appears unstable only deepens concern in Washington and in Indian-American circles alike.
The group of diplomats and diaspora leaders used the forum to call for immediate action from the Indian-American business and technology community, pressing them to engage lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Khanna urged a two-pronged strategy: lobbying Republican members to acknowledge India’s strategic weight in the global balance, while simultaneously pressing Democrats to adopt a more outspoken and active public stance in defence of the partnership.
He emphasised that these interventions must happen urgently, as the current trajectory could counteract three decades of effort to elevate India from a regional partner to a strategic pillar of the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
The conference also noted that the stakes were not limited to tariffs or trade but extended to technology supply chains, critical energy resilience, and defence-industrial ties—all areas where US-India collaboration is essential in balancing China’s rise.
Beyond the strategic calculus, the participants voiced unease about the narratives emerging in parallel with the tariff disputes. Garcetti in particular raised alarms about anti-India discourse cropping up in segments of American politics, warning against racist tropes and anti-nationalist rhetoric that threaten to marginalise both India and the Indian-American community.
The perception that South Asians in the United States could be drawn into politicised debates and scapegoating further complicates an already volatile situation. This dimension of identity politics reflects how deterioration in state-to-state relations can ripple through diaspora communities and affect the domestic social fabric.
Despite these sobering warnings, both Verma and Garcetti stopped short of pronouncing the relationship terminally broken. They underlined that the US-India bond is woven not only through diplomacy but also via enduring and resilient connections between companies, universities, innovators, and families.
These people-to-people ties, they argued, give the relationship a durability that can withstand the turbulence of any single administration. Yet they cautioned that political leadership matters enormously in shaping trust and strategic confidence, and without urgent corrective steps, the partnership risks drifting into a state of mutual suspicion that will be difficult to reverse.
The emergency conference call convened by Congressman Khanna laid bare the depth of anxiety across the Indian-American political establishment. What was once seen as one of Washington’s most durable bipartisan victories—the steady consolidation of a US-India strategic partnership—today faces its gravest test in a generation.
With tariffs sparking economic strain, overtures to Pakistan reviving old suspicions, and trust at risk of collapse, the future of US-India relations hinges on whether corrective political efforts can bridge what both former ambassadors described as the deepest rupture in more than 20 years.
Based On ANI Report
Agencies
