Hugs in February and not even on talking terms, hardly six months later, describes the relation between US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who never lost a chance to address each other as “friends”.

A German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, reported how Modi dodged at least four calls from Trump amid heightened tension over Washington slapping a 50 per cent tariff on India, 25 per cent of which is a punitive tariff urging India to stop buying Russian oil.

Former foreign secretary of India, Nirupama Rao, shrugged off the report, saying it should be taken with a “dollop of Himalayan salt.” What she meant was that it was based on just one media report.

Whatever the reality, it is a fact that the Modi-Trump bromance is almost over, although days later, Trump said he would “always be friends” with Modi, a comment the Indian prime minister fully reciprocated.

But just a day after that, Trump supporter and far-right activist Laura Boomer commented on X that the US president was considering blocking American companies from outsourcing jobs to India.

But then came a surprise call from Trump to wish Modi on his 75th birthday and appreciated the prime minister for doing a “tremendous job.”

A bigger surprise was in the content of his message on Truth Social where Trump addressed Modi as “my friend,” addressed by his first name and thanked him for his support “on ending the war between Russia and Ukraine!”

Wait! Wasn’t the punitive tariff demanding India to stop buying Russian oil, which, according to Washington, was fuelling the war against Ukraine? Yes.

But just a day later, the Trump administration hiked the H-1B visa fee to $100,000 from $2000 - $5000 in a move that hit India the hardest.

The visa designed to hire temporary skilled workers, especially in the tech sector, has historically benefited Indian software engineers. Highly qualified IT professionals from India form 72 per cent of all H-1B visas.

China, Canada, UK and Germany immediately cast their nets to attract Indian techies whose favourite destination has otherwise been America where more than 280,000 of them lived and worked at the last count in 2024.

In short, the Indo-US bilateral ties swung like a pendulum, with Modi remaining steadfast after reviving old ties with China and strengthening the relationship with Russia.

The Indo-US bonhomie of 25 years, when Washington managed to lure New Delhi from its traditional ally, Russia (before that the Soviet Union), to forge a friendship between the world’s largest and oldest democracies, was put paid to by Trump and his team.

It took decades of backchannel and bilateral negotiations for India to end its testy relations with the US and get closer to the world’s richest and most powerful country. Trump and Modi even struck a personal chord with their open display of friendship, brotherhood, and bear hugs.

Trump had famously joined the Indian prime minister at a mega event of the diaspora titled ‘Howdy Modi’ in Houston in 2020. Picking up his own punchline ‘ab ki baar Modi sarkar’ (Hindi for ‘Modi government this time’), the Indian prime minister had sought the diaspora’s support for the Republican leader seeking a second term by saying ‘ab ki baar Trump sarkar’. It’s another matter that Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Modi was also among the first global leaders to rush to Washington soon after Trump’s inauguration for his second term in February this year, even as Trump’s tariff war loomed large over the world.

The US president called Modi a “great friend” and set an ambitious target to double the bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030.

Trump even offered the F-35 stealth fighter jets to a reluctant Modi, who was shopping for more French Rafale multirole combat aircraft.

So what went wrong? A series of missteps and grandstanding led to the breakdown of trade negotiations, as Washington slapped 50 percent tariffs on India. Brazil is the only other country with a 50 per cent tariff.

Events that followed a four-day skirmish between India and its arch-rival, Pakistan, over a terror attack appear to have driven a wedge between Modi and Trump. Four Jihadi terrorists shot and killed 26, mostly Hindi, tourists, all men who were at a tourist spot.

India blamed Pakistan for the attack, although Islamabad denied any role. India launched a punitive missile attack in the wee hours of May 7, targeting terror infrastructure inside Pakistan. What followed was a retaliation and continued air attack from either side.

The battle ended abruptly on May 10. But the ceasefire announcement came from Trump and not Modi or his Pakistani counterpart.

Trump repeated multiple times that he was the one who forced the two South Asian neighbours to cease fire by dangling the threat of a trade ban.

But India made it clear that the ceasefire was initiated after a call from Pakistan and denied any foreign role, thus rubbing Trump the wrong way.

Pakistan quickly recommended Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, something that the US president yearns for, especially with archrival Barack Obama being a recipient. But India chose silence.

Then came Trump’s diktat to India to stop buying Russian oil, although it fell short of logic. China buys more Russian oil, while Europe is still a major customer of Russian gas.

Trump went on to call India’s economy “dead” in a stunning reversal of friendly ties with a country that successive US administrations had courted with the intent of keeping it away from forming an axis with China and Russia.

On the contrary, Trump’s actions and words sent India straight into a clash with China. Russia was already a close ally to both South Asian neighbours.

To make things worse, Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, called the Russia-Ukraine war “Modi’s war” and said the road to peace in Ukraine “runs through New Delhi.”

His logic was that Russia is funding its war against Ukraine by selling oil to India.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent mocked the Indian rupee, which hit a new low, at Rs87.96, against the US dollar amid all this mess.

Over to China

An already scheduled trip to Tianjin, China, to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) quickly transformed into a must-watch event that the US-led West watched closely. Every handshake, hug, chatter, and smile grabbed news space in the West, where news media and even YouTubers discussed the pros and cons of a stronger Eurasian group.

The SCO aims at a multilateral and multipolar world order, as against the US-led unipolar order. The China-led grouping accounts for 23 per cent of global GDP and 43 per cent of the world’s population.

The event paved the way for an SCO development bank on the lines of the West-led IMY and World Bank to support its members.

The icing on the cake was the presence of Turkey, a NATO member, with its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, participating in the SCO conclave.

Never has Modi been the cynosure of such international media coverage. Every newspaper and channel watched every move of Modi, Putin, and Xi, how they smiled at each other, how they hugged and cracked jokes.

Putin even brought a Hindi-speaking Russian translator to communicate with Modi during the bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the Tianjin conclave that provided the right optics for the members.

Leaders of over 20 countries across Asia and the Middle East attended the two-day summit, where Modi held bilateral discussions on the side with the host, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

India and China agreed to work for peace, belying the recent history of border clashes that spiked in 2020 when 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-hand combat.

In a thinly veiled swipe at Trump, Xi said in his opening speech that the “shadows of Cold War mentality and bullying have not dissipated, with new challenges mounting.”

Modi and Xi signalled a new beginning. A readout following the meeting affirmed their agreement not to let “their differences” turn into “disputes” and underlined that their “stable relationship” was necessary for the growth and development of the two countries, as well as for a multipolar world.”

While strategic analysts don’t see a complete thaw in Sino-Indian relations, the step taken after a year of bilateral meetings at the diplomatic and ministerial levels seems to have paid off, much to the chagrin of Trump and the rest of the West.

New Delhi made a tactical reset of its ties with Beijing over a year ago since it seeks China’s support for India’s presidency of BRICS in 2026.

A collective of emerging economies that held its last annual conclave in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in July, BRICS is an irritant for Trump, who had earlier warned its members of high trade tariffs.

BRICS — an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — now has about twenty members, including oil-rich UAE and Iran. Saudi Arabia is also set to be a full-fledged member.

Although the US had treated India as a close friend, it had not made it a strategic ally. This made it easy for Modi to pivot towards Beijing and form a power axis with its trusted ally, Russia.

Trump took to his Truth Social and termed US-India trade as a “one-sided disaster”, citing how the balance of trade is in India’s favour.

“It has been a totally one-sided disaster! Also, India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US,” he stated.

The US president went on to make a claim that India has not confirmed. “They have now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing, but it's getting late. They should have done so years ago. Just some simple facts for people to ponder!!!!”

American economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs squarely blamed Trump for the mess. “I can’t think of anything more incompetent in American foreign policy than that 25 per cent penalty tariff. You have to scratch your head and say how stupid they can be. I am talking about America’s own narrow interests that alienated India in this way; it is something that is mind-boggling,” he told an Indian podcast.

He urged India and China to come together and warned New Delhi not to trust Washington. “I’ve never seen such a bad misstep by the United States, and it won’t heal in any normal way because it proves the point that I have been making that the United States is badly governed, irresponsible, and untrustworthy. This is the basic point that I’ve been trying to tell my Indian friends for many, many years.”