US expert warns tariffs under Donald Trump are pushing India toward a closer alliance with China and Russia, as seen at the SCO summit.

The United States is risking the emergence of a powerful India-China-Russia axis, a senior American analyst warned, as US President Donald Trump’s tariff war drives New Delhi closer to Moscow and Beijing. Ed Price, senior Non-Resident Fellow at NYU, said, “If the Chinese, the Russians and the Indians get together in any form of alliance that is economic and around the edges military, there’s no way that the Americans can compete in the 21st Century. We might as well go home."

Ed Price argued that Washington’s punitive approach has left India little choice but to look eastward as he said, “If you slap a 50 per cent tariff on India, India is going to look elsewhere for trade partners. So this pretence of understanding why India would be at the SCO meeting or why PM Modi would be there, that’s what does not make sense. We know why. We know US is unilaterally shaping what was a multilateral trade organisation. The only country that can benefit from that is China ultimately."

— Rohit Sharma 🇺🇸🇮🇳 (@DcWalaDesi) September 2, 2025

Donald Trump’s Tariff Offensive

The Donald Trump administration has imposed 25 per cent reciprocal duties on Indian goods and an additional 25 per cent levy tied to New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil, bringing the total to 50 per cent- among the highest tariffs in the world. Donald Trump has repeatedly accused India of “fueling Russia’s deadly attacks on Ukraine" by purchasing discounted crude, even while refraining from tougher sanctions on Moscow itself.

In a post on his social media Truth Social, Donald Trump claimed on Monday that India had offered to slash its tariffs on US goods to zero but argued it was “too late." He described the trade relationship as a “one-sided disaster," writing, “What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us… In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest ‘client,’ but we sell them very little until now a totally one-sided relationship and it has been for many decades."

Donald Trump also faulted India for relying heavily on Russian oil and arms, adding, “They buy most of their oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US."

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First Published:

September 02, 2025, 20:13 IST

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