A top aide to the US President Donald Trump has aggressively escalated trade and diplomatic tensions between India and the US, accusing New Delhi of "pretending to be a friend" while erecting barriers against access to US products and "cheating" on immigration regulations. These comments follow Trump's retaliatory trade actions, such as fresh 25% tariffs on a broad spectrum of Indian imports, and represent a toughening of approach before continued global geopolitical realignments.
Trump's powerful deputy chief of staff and long-time mastermind of his immigration agenda, Stephen Miller, took swipes at India on several fronts in a Fox News appearance and subsequent interviews. "India presents itself to us as being one of our best friends in the world," Miller stated. "But they refuse to accept our products, they charge huge tariffs against us.". We also know they do a lot of cheating on immigration policy." While Miller did not go as far as directly citing the H-1B visa program, his language has commonly been understood to be aimed at the high-tech visa pathway controlled by Indian professionals, who commonly obtain almost 70% of such visas each year.
Trade tensions have been simmering, with the US trade deficit with India standing at $45.7 billion in 2024. The Trump administration blames India for having high tariffs, particularly on industrial and agricultural products, and for not reciprocating US market access. Miller's statements link visa policy and market entry issues, basically connecting immigration concessions to concrete progress on US goods' access to the Indian market.
The strongest criticism focuses on India's continued import of Russian oil in the wake of Western sanctions in response to the war against Ukraine. Miller and Trump's camp accuse India of "fueling Russia's war effort" by being one of the world's top consumers of cheap Russian crude since 2022. Trump himself went on social media to accuse India of selling on Russian oil "for big profits" and threatened additional tariff increases unless India changes its ways.
Indian officials and analysts have strongly resisted. Former diplomats and analysts contend that the US's own import patterns from Russia expose a double standard and point to Washington's earlier encouragement of India to purchase Russian oil to stabilize global energy markets. They also denounce the immigration cheating narrative as a distortion of India's visa policies and the formal processes that manage skilled migration.
The overall relationship, previously characterized by intense personal chemistry between Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has unmistakably entered a more acrimonious phase characterized by trade, energy, and immigration disagreements. With Washington weighing new options to check both Russia and China, India's policy of realist multipolarity—strengthening domestic interests while seeking diverse foreign alliances—is confronted with one of its toughest diplomatic challenges in recent years. With both sides making clear little desire to back away, the next few months promise to be marked by escalating rhetoric, gradual international reprisals, and a reestablishment of one of the world's most significant bilateral relationships.
