When it comes to bromances, President Donald Trump typically runs hot and cold. Remember Elon Musk? Vladimir Putin? First they’re besties, then they’re trading barbs. The latest example? Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
During Trump’s first term, Modi joined a Texas-sized rally in Houston to celebrate the strong ties between the US and India. Then Modi brought Trump to an Indian rally in the world’s largest cricket stadium. A lot of hand-holding ensued.
Flash-forward to Trump 2.0, and all is not well in the Trump-Modi bromance. That’s perhaps a microcosm of frayed ties between the United States and India, which is the world’s largest democracy. Plus, Indian immigrants make up the majority of H1-B visa holders in the United States.
Punishing US tariffs against India certainly plays a big role (Trump has blamed Modi for enacting “strenuous and obnoxious” trade barriers). Last month, the Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on Indian goods; it added another 25 percent as punishment for India’s purchase of discounted crude oil from Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022. “Vladimir, Stop!” Trump posted this year to Truth Social, castigating another former bromantic partner.
Then you throw in some geopolitical intrigue for good measure. Trump is currently courting India’s rival, Pakistan; after a war nearly broke out in May over a terrorist attack in the disputed Kashmir region, Trump claimed that he brokered a ceasefire (Modi disputes this). India’s rival Pakistan then flattered Trump by nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. In kind, Trump invited Pakistan’s top military official to the White House.
For more on the past, present, and future of Trump and Modi’s broken bromance, Today, Explained co-host Sean Ramewaram spoke with Sadanand Dhume, a columnist at the Wall Street Journal and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
We’re here to talk to you about a breakup.
Before we get into a tragic breakup, could you tell us why it matters that the United States and India have a strong, functional relationship?
Maintaining a good relationship with India has been a central part of American strategy in the Indo-Pacific for at least 25 years. And the reasons for that are obvious: India is the most populous nation in the world. It is currently the world’s fifth largest economy.
It’s predicted to be the third largest economy at market exchange rates. By 2028, it will have the world’s second largest military. And India has a large and disputed boundary with China.
The biggest democracy in the world.
Correct. And so for all those reasons, the US has worked hard, particularly over the last 25 years, to have India lean towards the US rather than lean towards China. And I think the US strategy has been quite successful. But now it’s all up in the air.
Before we talk about how it all ended up in the air, let’s talk about how good it used to be between the two leaders who are now breaking up.
Trump and Modi had quite a bromance in the first Trump administration. Many people saw them as having striking commonalities. Both are populists. Both were disliked by and dislike traditional elites and traditional mainstream media. Both had a habit of appealing directly to the masses in an unmediated way. And so, in some ways, they were similar characters and Modi really went out of his way to woo Trump. He and Trump held this rally together in Texas called the “Howdy, Modi!” rally.
Is that where they held hands?
They’ve held hands in more than one place. But yeah, that’s the one where Modi grabbed Trump by the hand and took him on a tour of the stadium. And then Modi invited Trump to Ahmedabad, which is in Gujarat, which is Modi’s home state, and there in this giant cricket stadium. They had another rally called “Namaste Trump” to welcome Trump to India. I believe there was something like 100,000 people at that rally.
And then before the 2020 election, Modi all but endorsed Trump, which is very unusual for a foreign leader, certainly for an Indian leader, to do. And obviously Trump lost. But the Biden folks were very gracious about it, and they kind of ignored it and pretended it didn’t happen. And then when Trump was reelected, Modi was one of the first foreign leaders to visit. He visited the White House in February, and he said that MAGA plus MIGA, which is Make India Great Again, equals MEGA. And so, you know, the bromance seemed to be going really well. And now suddenly it’s not.
Tell us how that happened. What caused the breakup, if it is indeed that?
A couple of things happened. The first is that in February, when Modi visited, there was an announcement that the US and India were working towards a trade deal, and that they wanted to more than double trade to $500 billion. And so the Indians thought that they had a bit of an inside track in getting a trade deal. That obviously has not happened.
The second thing, and I think this is the more important thing that went wrong, was that there was a brief military conflict between India and Pakistan in May. At the end of the four days, before Modi could say anything or announce anything to his own people or to his own country, Trump put out a truth on Truth Social post announcing a ceasefire and taking credit for it. So that was an embarrassment for Modi. India insists that it was their decision decided between them and Pakistan. The Pakistanis, who can’t believe their good fortune, have stepped up by nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.
And so as a result of all of this, Trump appears to be quite miffed with India and quite pleased with Pakistan. The Indians are miffed with Trump, and now it’s all become much more complicated because Trump has not only applied 25 percent regular reciprocal sanctions, but he’s also slapped on an additional 25 percent in retaliation supposedly for the fact that India buys lots of oil from Russia. And it really is going to hurt the Indian economy. That’s how the bromance has melted down.
I have to ask, hearing your timeline…is India in a trade war with the United States right now because essentially they impeded Trump’s efforts to get a Nobel Peace Prize?
That is at least partly and, in my view, a large part of the explanation. Yes.
I made this point in a Wall Street Journal column where I said, look, there’s still room for a grand bargain. But on a more serious note, if they are not able to come to an agreement and if this continues, I do think public opinion in India is in danger of turning against the US in a way that it really hasn’t for a long time.
Is that bad for India too?
Oh, for sure. I mean, put yourself in India’s shoes. They have this enormous neighbor, China. They have a disputed border. The Chinese lay claims to chunks of territory that the Indians regard as India, and vice versa.This means that India faces a China, which is technologically more advanced, which has an economy about five times larger than India’s. There was a border clash in 2020, in which 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives. India is moving to mend relations with China, but it recognizes that fundamentally it has a very deep problem with China that stretches back decades.
But they did just have a splashy little summit. Is India and Modi now trying to signal that things could be on the mend with China in light of what’s going on with the United States?
This was Modi’s first visit to China in seven years. This is a big deal. But my view is that he would probably have attended the summit either way. India normally does attend these summits. But what is different and what I think is fair to attribute to Trump’s actions is the very purposeful way in which Modi went around tweeting his photos with Putin and Xi Jinping.
India was trying to mend its relationship with China. But what Trump has done is made that a much more urgent priority for the Indians than it was before he started this tariff war.
