New Delhi: For all the mixed signalling from the US administration on its ties with India, one thing has become clearer in the last week – President Donald Trump’s men, escalating attacks against India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in particular, have not been reined in.
From calling the Russia-Ukraine conflict Modi’s “war” last week, White House aide Peter Navarro stepped up his attacks this week, claiming that “Brahmins” are profiteering from Russian oil purchases at the “cost of the Indian people” in a bizarre jibe at India. Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, and Navarro have emerged as India’s biggest critics in the current Trump administration. Attacks against India have expanded in recent days to include the H-1B visa programme from those in Trump’s sphere.
Trump Friday said in a post on Truth Social that the US has “lost India and Russia” to “deepest, darkest China.” Hours later, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, came after India’s purchase of Russian oil, asserting that it is “plain wrong” and hit out at New Delhi’s continued membership in BRICS, a regional grouping that the American President claimed is “anti-American.”
It’s a wolf pack unleashed on India, and Navarro is leading it. The escalation in the tone of attacks emanating from Washington, DC, makes all of Trump’s men ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
Navarro, the extremely loyal trade czar for Trump, has long been a proponent for tariffs. According to reports, Navarro was the brains behind a recent poster in the White House showcasing Trump alongside former American President’s such as Abraham Lincoln and ex-Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton titled as the “Tariff Men.”
The architect of Trump’s tariff policies, Navarro, has been training his guns on India for the better part of the last month. However, the White House Counsellor has not been alone on his crusade against New Delhi. Lutnick, the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the American financial services firm, has been taking aim at India’s ties with Russia for months. In March, Lutnick, as the Secretary of Commerce, demanded that India must stop purchasing Russian weapons, lower tariffs, and stop any discussions on de-dollarisation.
On Frida,y Lutnick followed a similar script, with his focus on BRICS – a grouping including Russia, India, China, Brazil, South Africa and five other nations – that have in recent years called for moving away from the US dollar as the international reserve currency. India, however, has rejected any discussions of de-dollarisation, a fact that Lutnick and the others have consistently disregarded.
The week gone by has been critical for Indian diplomacy amid the tensions with the US.
Modi started the week in the Chinese city of Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. Sunday began with a 40-minute bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, to indicate the growing thaw in ties.
The conversations between Modi and Xi were considered to be in a positive setting that included small talk apart from the larger official discussions. Sunday evening ended with photos of a beaming Indian Prime Minister shaking hands with President Xi before standing for a group photo of the leaders at the SCO summit.
Monday began with a bang, with a laughing Modi, holding Putin’s hand in a huddle with Xi. The optics were set to irritate the White House, as Trump has zeroed in on bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to an end.
The Putin-Modi-Xi bonhomie on show came a few days after the US’ additional tariffs on India came into effect, raising India’s total duties to 50 per cent. If the tariffs were imposed to push India to reduce Russian oil purchases that touched $56 billion last year, it has actually done little to move the needle in New Delhi.
Cue the modern-day White House Plumbers stepping in to pressure New Delhi.
“This is a longstanding meeting, it’s called the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and I think it’s largely performative,” Bessent said Monday in an appearance on Fox News. The Treasury Secretary added, “I think at the end of the day, India is the most populous democracy in the world. Their values are much closer to ours and to China’s than to Russia’s.”
In a surreal moment, the US Embassy in India announced Monday that it will spotlight “people, progress and possibilities” driving the ties between the two countries on X, with a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The post can be easily missed on the Embassy’s X timeline, given its focused messaging on warning Indians about how they could lose their American visas for a variety of reasons.
As the Embassy tries to promote the relationship, the US President on Tuesday asserted that the relationship between the two countries was “one-sided” and hit out at New Delhi’s “highest tariffs” in the world on American goods.
Also read: I will keep attacking India even though my missiles reach nowhere: Pakistani General X
From the bizarre to the dog-whistle
Navarro’s peak attack against the Indian Prime Minister in the last week was his post on X on 29 August, defending the additional tariffs imposed on New Delhi. The last post in the thread had an image of Modi folding his hands. The social media tirade stands out in an environment where language and formulations of words mark the outcomes of diplomacy. The posts on X, rarely seen in American diplomacy, however, are no longer unexpected from this White House.
But broadsides from senior officials have opened the door for Trump’s circle to target legal immigration from India.
“America does not need more visas for people from India. Perhaps no form of legal immigration has so displaced American workers as those from India. Enough already. We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first,” Charlie Kirk, the American Right-wing political commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, said in a post on X on Tuesday.
Laura Ingraham, the Fox talk-show host Monday came out against an India-US trade deal as it may “require” more visas issued to Indians. In the last 24 hours, Kirk and others have started claiming that India is running an influence operation on X, which should be investigated by Federal authorities.
These are not exceptions in Trump’s world, however. Laura Loomer, the influential Far-Right activist, who travelled with the US President during the campaign last year, in December 2024, set off a furore with inflammatory remarks against Indians in particular.
Loomer targeted Sriram Krishnan, who is of Indian-origin, as Trump’s White House advisor on artificial intelligence. Calling Indians “third world invaders”, Loomer said she voted for the reduction in H-1B visas, not their “extension”.
At the same time, however, reports indicate that the State Department, led by Marco Rubio, is scrambling to contain the damage and preserve India-US ties. The deep divide over India, Indian immigration and H-1B—within Trump’s administration and the larger “Make America Great Again” movement—has been brewing since the US President won the election in 2024.
From immigration, to Russian oil and now Modi’s China visit, are just the latest in a growing series of differences between India and the US.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)