Trump’s Tariff Tantrum Will Cost The Republicans Indian-American Votes in Houston, Austin And Edison

How to Lose 3 Million Voters In A Bullying Truth Social Tantrum

There are over 5 million Indian immigrants or children of Indian Americans living in the U.S. Nearly 3 million of them are eligible to vote and Indian-Americans are highly engaged politically. Over 71% of registered Indian American voters turned out in the 2020 election (compared to just over 66% of the general population). The states with the biggest concenetrations of Indian Americans are Caifornia (nearly a million), Texas, New Jersey, New York and Illinois but with significant populations in swing states Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina.

In 2024, survey found that between 60 and 69% of Indian Americans voted blue, although there was a significant rightward shift from 2020 to 2024 with the percentage of Indian Americans identifying as Democrats dropping from 56% to 47% and, despite the racism and xenophobia, GOP identification increasing from 16% to 21%.

Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that “In just a matter of months, Trump has gone from praising India as a major strategic partner to saying he wouldn’t care if its economy implodes. The Trump administration still values the U.S.-India partnership, officials say. But ties between Washington and New Delhi have steadily soured over disputes about trade, Russia and whether Trump deserves credit for brokering a cease-fire following a four-day conflict in May between India and its rival Pakistan. The standoff, fueled by the president’s public broadsides against India, threatens to sink a key but complex geopolitical relationship and break the bonds Trump has forged with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The fractures have appeared as U.S. ties with Pakistan have grown in recent months, culminating in a White House meeting between Trump and the country’s powerful army chief, Asim Munir, in June.”

This morning, John Reed and Humza Jilani reported that relations between Trump and Modi— and therefor the U.S. and India— have deteriorated since the tow right-wing leaders met in the White House last February, “culminating in Trump imposing a 25 percent tariff on India goods this week and unleashing a blunt denunciation of the world’s fifth-largest economy.”

In a series of combative late-night Truth Social posts, Trump criticised India’s trade barriers as “strenuous and obnoxious” and placed the world’s fastest-growing large economies alongside an American adversary, writing that both India and Russia were saddled with “dead economies.”

The US president’s invective startled Indian officials, leaving analysts struggling to understand how relations between the leaders— who until recently had enjoyed strong personal chemistry— had fallen so far, so quickly.

“Trump has obviously made it a very personal thing against Modi,” said Indrani Bagchi, chief executive of the Ananta Centre, a think-tank. “I don’t think it has much to do with policy anymore.”

Trump had hinted weeks ago that a trade agreement eith delhi was imminent as India sought to stave off “liberation day” tariffs of 26 per cent.

But the levies that came down on Wednesday— ahead of Trump’s August 1 deadline on other US trading partners— was just one percentage point lower. The US president added that there would be an unspecified penalty on India for buying Russian oil.

“Indians are acutely sensitive to perceived or real slights and this is not the way India has dealt with any head of state,” said C Raja Mohan, a visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies in Singapore. “The indignities go beyond any relationship, and the language, the style, the abruptness is not the way people deal with each other.” 

… At stake, analysts said, was more than the Trump-Modi relationship or even India’s economic ties with its biggest trading partner. They added that Trump also appeared to be drawing closer to India’s arch-rival Pakistan just weeks after the south Asian adversaries fought a brief conflict.

… In February, the two countries announced plans for a new 10-year defense partnership and said they intended to negotiate the first tranche of a bilateral trade deal by autumn. 

In the negotiations that followed, analysts and officials in India and the US said, the two sides reached broad agreement to cut tariffs and open markets in a swath of industries, with India insisting on protecting its politically sensitive food-grain and dairy markets. However, the draft agreement remained unsigned by Trump after personal ties between the two leaders soured.

New Delhi was angered by Trump weighing in during and after its May conflict with Pakistan, which it launched after an attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed 26 civilians. India blamed Pakistan for the attack, but it denied involvement and has called for a “neutral” investigation.

Modi’s government also openly disputed Trump’s claim to have brokered a ceasefire to the fighting and that he used trade deals in order to do so. 

The official Indian readout of a Trump-Modi call on June 17 said: “At no point during this entire sequence of events was there any discussion, at any level, on an India-US Trade Deal, or any proposal for a mediation by the US between India and Pakistan.”

Pakistan, by contrast, nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his role in defusing the crisis.

Islamabad has also offered the transactional US president a high-value Isis-K militant and as well as deals spanning cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence, hydrocarbons and critical minerals. Asim Munir, the country’s army chief and de facto leader, was hosted for a two-hour White House lunch in June.

In nearly the same breath that Trump hit India with tariffs this week, he announced a deal with Pakistan to develop the country’s “massive oil reserves.” In remarks that seemed tailor-made to rile New Delhi, he suggested Pakistan might one day “be selling oil to India.” Pakistan also received a lighter 19 per cent tariff.

While the US objections to India’s buying of oil [from Russia] were not the cause of current tensions between the countries, they “will certainly create more problems with Delhi”, said Ashley Tellis, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“As long as Trump’s policy was coddling Putin, India’s oil purchases were not a problem,” said Tellis. “Now they’ve suddenly become one because Trump’s interest in a ceasefire has intensified.”

In the Indian domestic context, the bust-up has unfolded during a parliamentary session, and Modi’s opponents have been quick to seize on it to attack the prime minister, whose authority is rarely seriously challenged at home.

“Everybody knows that the Indian economy is a dead economy,” opposition leader Rahul Gandhi told reporters this week, responding to the US president’s remarks. “President Trump has stated a fact.”

This escalating rift between Trump and Modi— once portrayed as ideological kindred spirits— could have ripple effects beyond foreign policy circles. For Indian-American voters, many of whom retain deep familial, cultural and emotional ties to India, Trump's language and abrupt policy turn may feel like a slap in the face. His insult to the Indian economy, his petulant refusal to sign a trade agreement and his cozying up to Pakistan— especially after the deadly attack in Kashmir— is likely to resonate with a population that, while increasingly politically diverse, remains deeply attuned to developments on the subcontinent.

I’m betting that the impact will show up in more than just abstract polling data. Indian-American voters are a growing force in New Jersey and Virginia, both of which have gubernatorial and legislative elections this year. And in Texas— home to over half a million Indian-Americans— Republicans have just redrawn congressional maps to eliminate five Democratic-leaning districts, including some with large South Asian populations. That kind of blatant disenfranchisement, combined with Trump’s public antagonism toward India, may galvanize voters who were drifting rightward to think twice about their political allegiances.

Will this be enough to reverse the modest rightward shift among Indian-American voters seen in 2024? It’s too soon to tell. But it’s safe to say that Trump’s scorched-earth approach to diplomacy has not gone unnoticed in Indian-American households— especially in key swing states where even marginal shifts in turnout or allegiance could have outsized impacts. If Democrats are smart, they’ll use this moment not just to critique Trump's erratic foreign policy, but to build a meaningful, respectful relationship with a fast-growing, highly engaged voting bloc that has every reason to take this personally.