Over the past year, two legal bombshells have put India’s growing relationship with the United States at one of its biggest tests yet.
As the two sides announced an unprecedented expansion of their defense and technology ties, U.S. prosecutors accused Indian government agents of plot to murder an American citizen on American soil.
A few months later, the Department of Justice filed charges for fraud and corruption against India’s most prominent business tycoon, whose businesses have reached dizzying heights thanks to the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
However, the relationship held. After decades of mutual suspicion between the two countries, said Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India, the fact that nothing now appears to derail their ties is a testament to their strength.
“I don’t think there’s anything significant enough to threaten the trajectory of the U.S.-India relationship,” Mr. Garcetti said Saturday in an interview at the New York embassy. Delhi, two days before the departure of President Biden and Donald Trump. J. Trump is sworn in as his successor.
“It’s incredibly resilient and almost inevitable,” Mr. Garcetti added. “It’s really the pace and the progress that’s not inevitable, like how quickly we’re getting there.”
The Biden administration’s strengthening ties with India came after nearly two decades of efforts to dispel Cold War-era suspicions, which culminated with U.S. sanctions over India’s nuclear program in 1998.
Washington sees great potential in India as a geopolitical counterweight to an increasingly assertive China. Already the world’s largest democracy, India succeeded China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023. India’s demographic advantages and growing technological capacity could help diversify global supply chains away from China, a priority of the United States and other major powers.
Now comes Mr. Trump’s second presidency, with his “America First” focus and threats of high tariffs on his trading partners. While many countries’ leaders are baffled, Indian officials insist they are not one of them.
S. Jaishankar, the foreign minister, said India has “a positive political relationship with Trump” that it hopes will only deepen. While attending the opening of a US consulate in the technology hub of Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore, on Friday, Mr Jaishankar quoted Mr Modi as saying that the two countries were overcoming “the hesitations of the history “.
Mr. Modi has a strong relationship with Mr. Trump, an important factor because of the new president’s personal approach to international relations. During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Modi hosted him at a large rally in his home state of Gujarat, as well as at a large gathering in Texas of the Indian diaspora – a growing expansion most crucial of Indian influence in American politics.
But some analysts have warned that Mr. Trump’s unpredictability and transactional approach could pose risks for India.
Two issues in particular are sure to test the relationship, and most likely soon. During the campaign, Mr. Trump criticized India as having gained an unfair trade advantage by maintaining high tariffs. And India could be drawn into controversy if Mr. Trump follows through on his promise of mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
Indians make up the third largest group of illegal immigrants in the United States, according to the Research on the bench Center. If Mr. Trump sends large numbers of Indians back to their home countries, it could be a major embarrassment for Mr. Modi.
Amita Batra, a New Delhi-based economist and trade expert, said India should see warning signs in Mr. Trump’s threat to raise tariffs, even against America’s traditional allies, as well as in his stated desire to break agreements with countries like Mexico and Canada that his own first administration had put in place.
“You can say that we are on good terms with Trump, that we have easy relations with the United States, but how Trump perceives that at any given moment is a whole different question,” Dr. Batra said during the an event at the Center for Social. and economic progress in New Delhi. “India must be very careful as it approaches Trump 2.0. »
During the meeting, Garcetti described the bilateral relationship as “the most compelling, the most challenging and the most important” for both countries.
A former Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Mr. Garcetti arrived in New Delhi in April 2023, after the mission went two years without an ambassador. His confirmation process hit a wall due to accusations that he ignored sexual harassment complaints made by an aide when he was mayor.
He made up for lost time with a burst of energy and an influence similar to that of a politician in campaign mode.
He was everywhere, from cricket grounds to cafeterias to cultural programs. Wearing a leather jacket, he even took to the piano to open for jazz legends Herbie Hancock and Dianne Reeves, who came to perform at the Piano Man Jazz Club in New Delhi..
But when Mr. Garcetti tried his hand at dance to a viral Bollywood tune during a Diwali celebration, relations between the two countries faced major obstacles.
In India, right-wing trolls have seized on US allegations that the Indian government is involved in a plot to assassinate a US citizen advocating a separatist cause in India. This, coupled with the US indictment of Gautam Adani, the business tycoon, is proof that the US was trying to stop India’s inevitable rise, nationalist voices online argued.
The Biden administration appeared determined to quietly address the assassination episode with New Delhi, demanding accountability without allowing it to become a major diplomatic flashpoint.
“On Capitol Hill, at the White House, I think with those who knew about it, it was a real moment of reflection and pause,” Mr. Garcetti said of the assassination case. “It hasn’t stopped the momentum: you know, relations between countries are always multifaceted and simultaneous, and not just between governments. But I think it was an immediate instinctive check.
Mr. Garcetti said the Biden administration was reassured by India’s response. New Delhi agreed to the US request, he said, “not only on accountability, but also on systemic reform and guarantees that this will never happen again.”
An Indian government investigation that concluded last week recommended legal action against an unnamed person with “prior criminal links.” He said the action “must be completed quickly,” in what analysts see as an attempt to begin the Trump era with a clean slate.
“If we want to cooperate in other areas that are important to us, intelligence sharing, etc., trust is the basis of everything,” Mr. Garcetti said. “But I was pretty blown away by how confidence can deepen through challenge.”
One question looming over deepening ties between the two countries is whether India can truly emerge as an alternative to China in global supply chains – something Mr Garcetti has also wondered.
India has reaped only a small portion of the unexpected benefits from its move away from China, with companies preferring countries like Vietnam, Taiwan and Mexico, where it is easier to do business and where tariffs are lower. lower.
Mr. Garcetti said India had made dramatic progress after opening its economy only in the 1990s, years after China. He took to his iPhone to illustrate a widely celebrated recent success: about 15 percent of iPhone manufacturing now takes place in Indiaa figure that could continue to grow rapidly, he said.
But more generally, India still struggles to attract foreign investment, despite improvements in infrastructure and a certain streamlining of regulations. The manufacturing sector is not growing fast enough to provide India with the jobs it desperately needs.
“Where India is leaving a lot of progress, jobs and growth on the table is in finding a better way to make investing here for export transparent and frictionless,” Mr. Garcetti said. . “Because, you know, it’s still, for many components of the manufacturing sector, one of, if not the, highest priced economies.”
“They’re not wrong to look and say it was 95 percent worse before,” Mr. Garcetti said. “But if that 5% is still double your competitor or 10 times your competitor, businesses, you know, are like water. They flow wherever gravity takes them.
