Marco Rubio's trip to India signals US need to repair ties

Kolkata: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived 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.

After landing in Kolkata, Rubio, a ⁠Roman Catholic, visited the headquarters of the humanitarian organisation and religious group founded by Mother Teresa. He is set to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi later ⁠on Saturday before attending embassy events.

Rubio's talks in India are expected to focus on trade, energy and defence cooperation, the State ‌Department said. The four-day trip, Rubio's first visit to the ​South Asian nation, will also include stops in Agra and Jaipur.

US 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 US tariffs on India.

Rubio seeks to restore ties hurt by tariffs

Many of those were rolled back in an interim agreement, but the two countries are yet to finalise 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, which groups the US, India, Japan and Australia. But analysts say that fell by the wayside amid trade tensions and distractions, including the US-Israeli war on Iran.

The US has meanwhile grown closer to India's rival and neighbour Pakistan, with Islamabad emerging as a key interlocutor in efforts to end the war, a new irritant to the US-India relationship.

The energy crisis sparked by the war has also set back US efforts ⁠to wean India off Russian ‌oil.

Rubio said on Thursday that the US 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."

For India, Trump's visit this month to Beijing amplified concerns about US 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 US relationship, "but ties have stabilised and both sides are trying to build momentum in the areas that there is convergence."

The Biden ‌administration lavished attention on India as a vital strategic partner and feted Modi during a 2023 state visit. Trump also welcomed the prime ‌minister to the White House early in his second term before imposing steep tariffs that threw ties off course.

Influential ambassador

US 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 per cent from a punishing 50 per cent, half of which had been linked to India's prior purchases of Russian oil.

But talks to finalise the deal slowed after the US Supreme Court in late February struck ⁠down Trump's tariffs.

That effectively brought ⁠the duty rate on Indian goods down to 10 per cent, 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 US 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 stabilise 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."

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 ​the third such gathering without a leader-level engagement and effectively an "unannounced downgrade" of the grouping, Rossow said.

In a post on X, the US Embassy in New Delhi nevertheless emphasised 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."