Between the military honor guard, flag-waving schoolchildren and state banquet in Beijing last week, President Trump found time to lavish praise on Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, calling him “a great leader” and “a friend.”
The two men, Mr. Trump said, would “have a fantastic future together.”
Mr. Trump flew home without stopping anywhere else in Asia. In interviews during and after the trip, he made no reassuring remarks on U.S. allies or partners in the region. He did say, however, that he would revisit arms sales to Taiwan, a comment that has stirred anxiety across Asia and prompted questions about U.S. security commitments.
Indian leaders are among those raising eyebrows.
Rather than getting a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Trump to hear about his vision for Asia, they are hosting Secretary of State Marco Rubio on his first trip to the world’s most populous nation. The four-day visit, with plans for closed-door diplomacy and jaunts to historical sites, began on Saturday with a quick stop at Mother Teresa’s charity in Kolkata and a meeting with Narendra Modi, the prime minister, in Delhi.
Mr. Rubio, who was in Beijing with Mr. Trump, will be expected to explain throughout his trip the administration’s Asia policy, given the American president’s clear desire to become a partner of Mr. Xi and to downplay security concerns over China.
The secretary will meet not only with Indian officials, but also with the top diplomats from Japan and Australia, who are flying to Delhi for a conclave next Tuesday of a partnership known as the Quad.
And Mr. Rubio is in India playing cleanup for Mr. Trump, who tried to cripple the country’s economy with high tariffs last summer after Mr. Modi, the prime minister, refused to nominate the American president for a Nobel Peace Prize. Mr. Trump had insisted that he played a crucial role in getting India and Pakistan to reach a cease-fire after each country had carried out deadly military strikes against the other.
Now there is a new strain on relations: Mr. Trump has praised Pakistani leaders for acting as mediators in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.
Mr. Trump’s approach to India and China is the opposite of how the Biden administration and even the first Trump administration dealt with both countries.
Starting in the 2000s, Republican and Democratic policymakers pushed for closer ties with India, both to secure a partner to counterbalance against China and to wean Delhi off its reliance on Russia for security assistance.
Mr. Trump has upended that. And one surprising consequence is that Indian officials are trying harder to improve relations with China given the sudden erosion of U.S. support.
“There is deep concern on the current direction of India-U.S. relations and how ties have deteriorated,” said Ananth Krishnan, a Beijing resident and the author of a book about India and China.
“While I believe there is resilience to the deep linkages both sides have forged when you look at defense and technology, for example,” he said, “it’s still striking how the narrative has shifted from the framing of India as a key partner in the region.”
Indian officials noted Mr. Trump’s use of the term “G2” to refer to relations between the United States and China — “the two great countries” — in an interview he did in Beijing with Fox News.
Indeed, Mr. Trump has long had an affinity for the leaders of China and Russia. He expresses admiration for authoritarian leaders, sometimes with an aesthetic component. He said in the Fox News interview that Mr. Xi, who is almost six feet tall, looked like he was out of “central casting. He added: “You couldn’t find a guy like him.”
Mr. Modi presides over a democracy, even if many experts say he tries to rule in an authoritarian manner.
In Mr. Trump’s first term, the populist Indian prime minister seemed to win over the populist U.S. president. Mr. Modi in 2020 threw a campaign-style rally for Mr. Trump in a 110,000-seat cricket stadium in India, following a similar “Howdy, Modi!” mass party for the Indian leader in Houston. “From this day onward, India will always hold a special place in our hearts,” Mr. Trump said in Ahmedabad.
But in a call last June, Mr. Modi insisted that India and Pakistan had resolved their crisis on their own, without help from Mr. Trump. The American president, who is obsessed with getting the Nobel Peace Prize, seethed, The New York Times reported.
He soon imposed tariffs of 50 percent on Indian imports that U.S. companies had to pay. The two countries reached an interim trade agreement in February with onerous terms for India. Then the Supreme Court struck down Mr. Trump’s tariffs on more than 100 countries, though the president is still trying to impose such taxes through alternative means.
Now “Secretary Rubio’s gargantuan task is to lay the foundation for Trump to repair this relationship,” said Donald Lu, a retired career diplomat and an assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia in the Biden administration.
Part of that mission falls to a close ally of Mr. Trump’s, Sergio Gor, the new ambassador to India.
“Trump One was in a sense a continuation of the Bush and Obama pro-India pivot and the buildup of the Indo-Pacific partnership to contain China,” said Meenakshi Narula Ahamed, the author of a book on U.S.-India relations.
One problem now, she added, is that the current crop of Trump aides do not view India favorably.
“There is no strategic thinking regarding alliances that I can see,” she said.
Given Mr. Trump’s unpredictability, many Indian officials say the country should adhere to its longstanding policy of “strategic autonomy” — keeping other world powers at arm’s length.
That position is “part of our history and our evolution,” and “it is something which is very deep,” Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s top diplomat, said at the Munich Security Conference in February.
The next month, Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, shocked some Indian officials by asserting at the Raisina Dialogue, an annual forum in Delhi, that the U.S. government could see India as an economic and strategic threat.
“India should understand that we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying, ‘We are going to let you develop all these markets,’ and then, the next thing we know, you are beating us in a lot of commercial things,” he said.
Last month, Mr. Trump posted a transcript from a right-wing podcast in which the host, Michael Savage, referred to China and India as “hellhole” places and said recent immigrants from those countries had not “integrated” into the United States as “European Americans” had.
Without naming Mr. Trump, the Indian government took the rare step of rebuking the White House on social media, calling the comments “obviously uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste.”
Mr. Jaishankar and other Indian officials will try to gauge the Trump administration’s estimation of their country in talks with Mr. Rubio on Sunday. They also aim to better understand Mr. Trump’s intentions with Mr. Xi.
“They will particularly seek to understand the significance of Washington agreeing to a ‘constructive relationship of strategic stability’ with Beijing,” said Tanvi Madan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who writes on India-China relations.
The top diplomats from Japan and Australia, who plan to take part in the Quad meeting on Tuesday, have the same questions.
Mr. Trump’s moves against India have had a notable effect: Indian officials are trying to defuse tensions with China. Relations between the two nations imploded after their militaries clashed in 2020 along their Himalayan border. The countries fought a war over disputed mountainous territory in 1962.
“While I don’t think India-China ties will go back to where they were, because what we saw in 2020 was a deep rupture, it’s clear that both are looking to restore some ballast to the relationship,” said Mr. Krishnan, the author in Beijing.
The two nations have recently eased travel restrictions between them, and India is working on possibly allowing more Chinese investment into some nonsensitive areas of the Indian economy.
If progress is made on the border issue, Mr. Krishnan said, “that could potentially raise the ceiling that currently limits the relationship.”
Pragati K.B. contributed research.
