Marco Rubio meets Jaishankar, says ties with Pakistan, China not at expense of US-India relations; early trade deal likely

Jaishankar signalled that India would continue with its 'multi-alignment' to protect its 'range of interests'.

New Delhi: The much-awaited interim trade deal between New Delhi and Washington, DC, may be inked soon, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated on Sunday, even as American President Donald Trump’s administration stressed that bilateral relations had not lost momentum over tariffs and the United States’ outreach to China and Pakistan.

As they met in New Delhi after months of strain in bilateral ties despite continued engagement, Jaishankar and Rubio underscored “India First” and “America First”, respectively, as the guiding principles of their countries’ foreign policies.

“We have relations with many other countries. We work at the tactical level, for example, and in many other ways, with countries all over the world,” Rubio told journalists as he and Jaishankar jointly addressed journalists in New Delhi. “But I don't view our relations with any country in the world as coming at the expense of our strategic alliance with India.”

His comment appeared to be an attempt to address the unease in New Delhi over Trump’s bonhomie with Pakistan Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, who now emerged as a key interlocutor between Tehran and Washington, D.C., as well as his recent meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Jaishankar, too, signalled that India would continue with its “multi-alignment” to protect its “range of interests”. “I think we will increasingly see conflicts or difficult situations where, because India’s interests are growing, we have relationships with all the parties involved,” said the external affairs minister, citing India’s ties with Russia, Europe, Ukraine and the US.

The External Affairs Minister stated that India would advocate dialogue and diplomacy to address conflicts, support unimpeded maritime commerce, demand respect for international law, oppose “weaponisation” of market shares and resources, and believe in the value of trusted partnerships and resilient supply chains to derisk the global economy.

Rubio, who is also the National Security Advisor to the US president, is currently on a four-day tour to India. He called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and conveyed to him an invitation from Trump to visit Washington, DC.

The visit of Trump’s secretary of state to New Delhi is being seen as an attempt to bring back on track the India-US relations, which came under stress over the US president’s tariff war against India, his move to force India to stop buying oil from Russia, his repeated claims – despite denials from New Delhi – about mediating a truce between India and Pakistan to end the cross-border military flare-up between the two South Asian neighbours in May 2025, and his bonhomie with the civil-military leaders of Pakistan just after the April 22, 2025, terrorist attacks in Pahalgam, India.

India and the US agreed on a framework for an interim trade deal in February. But, after the US Supreme Court struck down reciprocal tariffs, the Trump Administration imposed additional duties under Section 122 of the US Trade Act of 1974, apart from launching Section 301 investigations into major exporters over excess capacity and labour standards. India responded to both probes, with bilateral consultations currently underway.

“We spoke about the value of concluding at an early date the final text of the interim agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade,” Jaishankar said after meeting Rubio. He noted that the interim deal would be an important step towards a comprehensive bilateral trade agreement, which was envisaged during Modi's meeting with Trump in February 2025. A team of officials from New Delhi recently visited Washington, D.C., to discuss the interim trade deal, while a US delegation will visit India to continue negotiations.

“We're going to wind up with a trade agreement that's going to be enduring, and beneficial to both sides and sustainable,” said Rubio.

The External Affairs Minister and his counterpart from Washington, DC, also discussed bilateral energy ties, with the Trump Administration nudging India to buy more oil and gas from the US. Jaishankar noted that conflicts in West Asia, particularly the situation around the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of the attack on Iran by Israel and the US and the Persian Gulf nation’s retaliatory strikes on the US allies in its neighbourhood, had triggered concerns about the energy security of India.

“The way we will deal with the current situation in Strait of Hormuz and frankly, going forward as well, is to diversify our energy sources, because that is at the heart of our energy security, and that is why we feel strongly that the energy market should not be distorted, should not be constrained,” Jaishankar said, adding: “It is important to keep energy prices down for global growth.”

“There has actually been a very significant uptick in our energy imports from the US. It's not new. It started many years ago, but I think it's really picked up in the last year,” the external affairs minister said. Rubio noted that India and the US were strategically aligned on energy.

In the wake of the West Asia conflicts, Trump’s administration granted India a waiver from its sanctions on Russia to buy oil already shipped from the former Soviet Union nation. Washington, DC, wants India to buy more oil from Venezuela, now controlled by the US.

The US is also keen to raise its own oil and gas exports to India. India has significantly expanded its energy trade with the United States in recent years. The US share in India’s crude oil imports rose from 4.6 per cent in 2024-25 to 8.1 per cent during April-November of 2025-26. Imports of American crude also increased by over 90 per cent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2025-26. India’s LNG and LPG purchases from the US have also grown steadily.

Rubio and Jaishankar also discussed India-US cooperation in defence and security, critical minerals and Artificial Intelligence, nuclear energy and people-to-people contacts, counterterrorism and counternarcotics.