Geopolitical Awakening

From New Delhi to Washington, a friendship that once looked like a strategy is turning into a stress test. President Trump has hit India with new tariffs ~ 25 per cent already in effect, and another 25 per cent on the way unless India stops buying Russian oil. If both tiers stand, that’s 50 per cent at the U.S. border. There are three simple questions with complicated answers: How big is U.S.-India trade? Why do these tariffs matter?

- By NARAIN BATRA

And who gets hurt first ~ India, the United States, or the broader Indo-Pacific strategy? Washington isn’t just arguing about trade balances anymore; it’s linking tariffs to geopolitical alignment, in this case, India’s energy ties with Russia. New Delhi, for its part, says energy decisions are about price and security, not politics. Right now, Russia supplies 35 per cent of India’s crude, roughly 1.75 million barrels a day in the first half of this year.

That’s not a dial you casually turn. The trade with the US is big. In 2024, total U.S.-India trade in goods and services was about $212.3 billion. Goods alone were $128.9 billion, with $87.3 billion of U.S. imports from India and $41.6 billion of U.S. exports to India. The U.S. also traded $83.4 billion in services with India. That’s a deep, two-way relationship, not a one-off fling. And it’s diverse. On the goods side, think pharma, apparel and textiles, gems and jewelry, machinery, electronics. On the services side, it’s software, IT, business process operations, research, and consulting. The upshot: a 50 per cent tariff, if fully applied and sustained, isn’t a tweak ~ it’s a pressure washer aimed at a wide swath of the relationship. Let’s go sector by sector. What gets hit first?

Consumer goods and retail:

Apparel, footwear, housewares, jewellery ~ anything price-sensitive at big-box retailers ~ takes an immediate hit. Importers either eat the margin or pass costs to shoppers. Jewellers and diamond-cutting supply chains, especially those tied to Surat, were already racing shipments to beat the effective date. Expect some front-loading and then a trough. Industry reports show a pre-deadline export surge to the U.S. jewellery market. Let’s look at pharmaceuticals and generics. Tariffs target goods, not services, so pills and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) crossing the border face the tax.