Trump Sidelined as Xi Embraces Modi and Putin

If Donald Trump hoped to bring India to heel, things are not going according to plan. Narendra Modi has proved unyielding and is giving Trump the silent treatment.

Analysts warn that Trump’s blunt use of hard power risks backfiring, pushing India closer to Moscow and Beijing. (Photo: Narendra Modi Facebook)

Since Trump targeted India with steep new tariffs earlier this month, he has phoned the Indian prime minister four times to seek a compromise. Each time, Modi has refused to take the call, Adrian Blomfield reported for The Telegraph.

In the same period, Modi has spoken twice with his “friend” Vladimir Putin and dispatched his foreign minister to Moscow.

This weekend, he travels to China for the first time in seven years to attend a security summit hosted by Xi Jinping in the northeastern city of Tianjin. The two leaders, long estranged but now bound by circumstance, are scheduled to hold talks on Sunday.

Since 2001, Washington has sought to draw India into its orbit as a counterweight to China.

But Trump has upended a quarter-century of careful diplomacy, first imposing a 25% tariff on Indian exports, then doubling it to punish New Delhi for buying Russian oil—the stiffest measures Washington has imposed on any country aside from Brazil.

Adding insult to injury, Trump has cultivated a new friendship with Pakistan, India’s bitterest foe, even inviting its hardline army chief and de facto leader, Asim Munir, to lunch at the White House.

Modi, meanwhile, has been left out in the cold. Analysts warn that Trump’s blunt use of hard power risks backfiring, pushing India closer to Moscow and Beijing.

The timing benefits Xi, who this weekend is hosting some of Washington’s chief adversaries at a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit—a bloc founded by China and Russia to counter US influence.