WASHINGTON: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio lands in India on Saturday on a mission to shore up a partnership battered by President Donald Trump's tariffs and Washington's renewed engagement with New Delhi's rivals Pakistan and China.
The four-day trip, Rubio's first visit to India, will include stops in Kolkata, Agra, Jaipur and New Delhi for talks focused on trade, energy and defense cooperation, the State Department said.
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U.S. presidents, including Trump in his first term, have long tried to pull historically non-aligned India closer as a counterweight to Russian and rising Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. Those efforts appeared to take a blow last year when Trump slapped some of the highest U.S. tariffs on India.
Many of those were rolled back in an interim agreement, but the two countries are yet to finalize a comprehensive agreement on trade.
New Delhi has pressed for a Trump visit to India tied to a summit of the Quad group of countries that includes the U.S., India, Japan and Australia, but analysts say that fell by the wayside amid trade tensions and distractions including of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.
The U.S. has meanwhile grown closer to India's rival and neighbor Pakistan, with Islamabad emerging as a key interlocutor in efforts to end the war, a new irritant to the U.S.-India relationship.
The energy crisis sparked by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has also set back U.S. efforts to wean India off Russian oil.
Rubio said on Thursday energy would be a focus and the U.S. was already in talks to expand its share of India's energy supply.
"We want to sell them as much energy as they'll buy," he said. "There's a lot to work on with India. They're a great ally, a great partner. We do a lot of good work with them."
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For India, Trump's visit this month to Beijing amplified concerns about U.S. ties, said Basant Sanghera, a former State Department South Asia policy expert now with The Asia Group consultancy.
Sanghera said Trump's approach had "created a perfect storm of anxiety" in India about the U.S. relationship, "but ties have stabilized and both sides are trying to build momentum in the areas that there is convergence."
INFLUENTIAL AMBASSADOR
The Biden administration lavished attention on India as vital a strategic partner and feted Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a 2023 state visit. Trump also welcomed Modi to the White House early in his second term before imposing steep tariffs that threw ties off course.
U.S. Ambassador Sergio Gor, dubbed "the India whisperer", by Michael Kugelman of the Atlantic Council think tank, arrived in New Delhi in January and has sought to reset ties. Gor is a friend of Trump's and previously a White House adviser.
In February, the two countries reached a "framework for an interim agreement" on trade to lower Trump's tariffs on Indian goods to 18% from a punishing 50%, half of which had been linked to India's prior purchases of Russian oil.
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But talks to finalize the deal slowed after the U.S. Supreme Court in late February struck down Trump's tariffs.
That effectively brought the duty rate on Indian goods down to 10%, but New Delhi has been weighing its options as the Trump administration pursues investigations under unfair trade practices legislation widely expected to restore much of the prior levies.
One person familiar with the talks said the U.S. had been disappointed with India's perceived foot-dragging and apparent belief that it could strike a good deal without giving much up, and this mood was likely to cloud Rubio's efforts to stabilize ties.
"I do not expect Secretary Rubio will have much impact in changing the downward trajectory," said Richard Rossow of the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
"The lack of a trade agreement - more than three months after the announcement of the "interim deal" - clouds other areas of engagement."
DOWNGRADE OF GROUP COUNTERING CHINA?
India's entreaties for the White House to schedule a Trump visit for a summit of the Quad, which was formed as a counter to China's growing influence, have so far gone unanswered, according to another person familiar with the talks.
Rubio's meeting with other Quad foreign ministers in Delhi next week will be a third such gathering without a leader-level engagement and effectively an "unannounced downgrade" of the grouping, Rossow said.
In a post on X the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi nevertheless emphasized the importance of the Quad, saying it stood "together for a free and open Indo-Pacific... From supporting regional security to diversifying critical minerals supply chains."
