{"id":414789,"date":"2025-09-11T03:25:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T03:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/414789\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T03:25:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T03:25:10","slug":"donald-trump-tariffs-spark-alarm-over-india-u-s-ties-calls-for-unity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/414789\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump tariffs spark alarm over India-U.S. ties, calls for unity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top lawmakers, influential Indian American business leaders, and former U.S. diplomats on Wednesday (September 10, 2025) warned that President Donald Trump\u2019s trade war with India<\/a> and his administration\u2019s recent rhetoric threaten<\/a> to undo decades of bipartisan progress in relations<\/a> between the world\u2019s two largest democracies.<\/p>\n

A high-level virtual conference convened by the Indian American Council and chaired by Indian American Congressman Ro Khanna brought together Silicon Valley pioneer Vinod Khosla, former U.S. ambassadors to India Richard Verma and Eric Garcetti, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. The mood was urgent: speakers described Mr. Trump\u2019s escalating<\/a> tariffs as a self-inflicted wound that could push New Delhi closer to Moscow and Beijing <\/a>while eroding trust built painstakingly since the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not a business deal you walk away from. It\u2019s a long-term commitment,\u201d said Khosla, a billionaire investor who played a behind-the-scenes role in the landmark U.S.-India civil nuclear deal under President George W. Bush. \u201cIf we drive India closer to Russia and China, the consequences could last decades,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Mr., Khosla warned that tariffs risk transforming a \u201cnatural alignment\u201d into estrangement. \u201cI\u2019ve even seen and heard some talk about a different currency than the dollar as a global currency,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would be a natural thing for the BRIC countries. Between them and Russia and China, there could be another global cryptocurrency that would be the exchange medium, and that starts to challenge the dollar. There are too many strategic implications. It\u2019s pretty important that we not let it happen,\u201d he told the select virtual gathering, which was opened to a few members of the press. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mr. Khanna, dialing in from Capitol Hill, told participants that Trump\u2019s measures had already placed \u201cthe highest tariffs on India and Brazil more than even China\u201d \u2014 a move he described as unsustainable for Indian industries such as textiles and leather. He linked the escalation to reports that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. \u201cTrump is really the one who\u2019s escalated this,\u201d Khanna said. \u201cWe need to make sure he de-escalates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Mr. Khosla and Mr. Khanna said there was a straightforward way forward: rollback of tariffs. \u201cThere\u2019s not even two things,\u201d Khosla insisted. \u201cThere\u2019s only one thing that matters right now \u2026 tariffs. If he can go back on the tariff issue, then Modi and Trump can go back to the natural alignment they were building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti, who until recently served as U.S. ambassador in New Delhi, said the crisis showed how quickly goodwill could vanish. \u201cThat bipartisan, bicameral, bi-branch consensus so rare in Washington today \u2026 is being obliterated in the matter of just a few weeks,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the deepest set of blows, not just one punch in the face, from an American executive to India that we\u2019ve seen in over 20 years.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Mr. Garcetti urged Indian Americans and their allies to focus on rebuilding. He laid out two \u201caction items\u201d: launching semi-official dialogues between Indian and American leaders in business, academia, and security, and mounting congressional delegations to India to reassure the public. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing better than that,\u201d he said. \u201cGet to India \u2026 show Indians that all Americans care about this relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former ambassador Richard Verma described his alarm at how quickly Trump\u2019s policies had erased progress since President Bill Clinton\u2019s landmark 2000 visit. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe what I witnessed in a two-month period \u2014 that the President wiped out 25 years of progress. Why? Apparently because he was upset that Prime Minister Modi didn\u2019t acknowledge his role in brokering some alleged ceasefire between India and Pakistan,\u201d Verma said. <\/p>\n

Mr. Verma added that Trump\u2019s subsequent critiques of India\u2019s economy and his courting of Pakistan \u201creinserted the hyphen\u201d that U.S. policy had shed for two decades. \u201cIf we had one vulnerability in the relationship, it was trust,\u201d he said. \u201cUnfortunately, the last few months have proven to the Indian skeptics that we cannot be trusted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Business leaders echoed the call for calm. Monty Ahuja, a Cleveland-based automotive entrepreneur, warned that \u201cyears of building a slow and steady relationship [were] kind of blew up in a matter of days, if not weeks.\u201d He called for creating \u201csome sort of calm in this atmosphere\u201d and urged the Indian diaspora to unite across partisan lines. <\/p>\n

Others emphasized mobilization. Kanwal Rekhi, another Silicon Valley veteran, said bluntly: \u201cI think it\u2019s time to raise money\u2026 pay the American game, PR game, lobbying game. Raise awareness at a broader level.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Khanna closed by underscoring the stakes. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have called this call urgently and asked Vinod Khosla, the ambassadors, and all of you to get on if it wasn\u2019t important,\u201d he said. \u201cThis could really undermine 30 years of hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting ended with agreement on two immediate action items: pressing Republican and Democratic lawmakers to advocate reversal of tariffs, and ramping up visible community activism to signal the strategic importance of the U.S.-India partnership. <\/p>\n

This article is published in an arrangement with 5WH<\/a>. <\/b><\/p>\n

Published – September 11, 2025 07:16 am IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top lawmakers, influential Indian American business leaders, and former U.S. diplomats on Wednesday (September 10, 2025) warned that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[112813,142416,142415,142414,49,978,142417,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-414789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-donald-trump-tariffs-on-india","9":"tag-india-united-states-trade-war","10":"tag-top-lawmakers-urge-de-escalation-to-preserve-bilateral-relations","11":"tag-top-lawmakers-warn-trumps-tariff-war-with-india","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-us-imposes-50-tariffs-on-india","15":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115183532821816980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}