By N. C. Bipindra

New Delhi/Washington: The Trump administration, never one to let consistency get in the way of a good relationship, has once again managed to pat India on the head and kick it in the shins in the same week, a diplomatic manoeuvre that experts are beginning to call the “American Namaste”: two hands pressed together, but aimed squarely at your face.

The latest chapter in Washington’s bewildering romance with New Delhi arrived Tuesday (June 2, 2026) in the form of a proposed 12.5% tariff on Indian imports, tucked inside a 92-page report accusing India of failing to ban goods made with forced labour.

The document, which apparently took 92 pages to say “we’re adding to the bill,” also helpfully identified India as a middleman in Chinese cotton supply chains, the diplomatic equivalent of telling a dinner guest they smell funny while still expecting them to pick up the tab.

This came, mind you, on the second day of active trade talks between Indian and US officials in New Delhi. One imagines the American delegation arriving at Udyog Bhawan with briefcases in one hand and the tariff proposal in the other, cheerfully announcing, “Great meeting, by the way, here’s a surcharge.”

The Peace That Dare Not Speak Its Name

The roots of this peculiar entanglement trace back to May 2025, when Operation Sindoor, India’s sharp, calculated military response to the Pahalgam terror attack, brought the subcontinent to the edge of wider conflict.

When the guns fell silent, Pakistan’s leadership, with characteristic enthusiasm for external validation, rushed to thank Donald Trump for brokering peace, essentially handing him a diplomatic trophy he hadn’t quite won.

India, characteristically, said nothing of the sort. New Delhi’s position was polite, firm, and unmistakable: we handled it, thank you.

Ministry of External Affairs spokespeople deployed that particularly Indian form of diplomatic ice — technically courteous, structurally devastating — to reject the Trump-as-peacemaker narrative at every available opportunity.

Trump, who had already mentally drafted the press release, the monument inscription, and possibly a limited-edition commemorative coin, was not amused.

Pakistan, having correctly identified that loudly crediting America costs nothing and buys considerable goodwill in Washington, has since been rewarded with what U. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth called “an unexpected development and a true friendship,” praise delivered at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, alongside warm words for Army chief Asim Munir, a man India considers rather less than a peacemaker.

India’s External Affairs Ministry, upon hearing Hegseth describe this blossoming Washington-Islamabad romance, responded with the subcontinental equivalent of a slow blink: “We hope our friends and partners would impress upon the country to credibly and irrevocably abjure cross-border terrorism.” In diplomatic translation: lovely that you’ve made a new friend. Perhaps ask him to stop the terrorism first.

The Tariff As Love Language

But back to the money, specifically, India’s money, which Washington would now like a percentage of. The 12.5% tariff proposal places India in the company of 54 nations deemed to lack a forced-labour import prohibition altogether.

Notably, the USTR’s own investigation was not, as trade analyst Ajay Srivastava pointed out to Reuters with barely concealed exasperation, actually about forced labour in Indian exports, but about whether India had done enough to block other countries’ forced-labour goods.

India is, in short, being fined for insufficient policing of someone else’s problem.

Canada, the European Union, Mexico, and Pakistan — yes, that Pakistan, the new best friend — face only a 10% tariff for the comparatively genteel offence of having a forced-labour ban but not enforcing it well enough.

India, which apparently committed the greater sin of not having written the right law, pays more.

The symmetry is exquisite: Pakistan gets geopolitical rehabilitation and a discount tariff. India gets accused of cotton laundering and a higher bill.

The Critical Anchor That Keeps Getting Invoiced

To be fair to Washington — a phrase that requires some effort this week — Hegseth did also describe India as a “critical anchor of stability in the Indo-Pacific” and reaffirmed US commitment to defence cooperation and co-production with New Delhi.

So the relationship is not without its affections. It’s just that those affections are expressed in the manner of a landlord who frames your tenant portrait lovingly on the wall while simultaneously raising your rent.

The Modi government, for its part, is expected to raise the Section 301 investigation directly with the visiting US delegation, a conversation one imagines will be conducted with great warmth, elaborate courtesy, and the quiet fury of a nation that just received a 92-page insult during a meeting it had invited you to.

India’s commerce ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the tariff proposal. Given the week they’ve been having, one cannot blame them for needing a moment.

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