After President Trump raised tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent in August, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. When U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was asked at the time about future U.S.-India tariff negotiations, Lutnick compared India to Canada, which he said had applied “bravado” retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. which were later dropped by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Lutnick said of the retaliatory tariffs: “It’s all bravado, because you think it feels good to fight with the biggest client in the world.” He said eventually businesses will tell their government “you’ve got to stop this and go make a deal with America.”
Predicting India will come a similar conclusion, Lutnick said in September: “In a month or two months, I think India’s gonna be at the table, and they’re gonna say they’re sorry, and they’re gonna try to make a deal with Donald Trump.”
“In a month or two, India will come to the negotiating table. They will say they are sorry and they will try to make a deal with Donald Trump,” says U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pic.twitter.com/84zMgzwi9n
— Shashank Mattoo (@MattooShashank) September 5, 2025
[NOTE: Ankit Bhuptani, Senior Fellow at VRF India, responded to Lutnick: “If Modi ever bends to Trump’s bullying (which I doubt), my vote goes to NOTA, not BJP. India can stay hungry for a meal a day but we won’t compromise our sovereignty. We are not Canada.”]
Three months have passed since Lutnick’s prediction and Modi has not yet apologized. This week Modi welcomed Putin to Delhi, where according to Bloomberg, the two leaders “deepened their Trump-defying bromance.” (When Trump applied the 50 percent tariffs on India, he cited as provocation India’s large-scale purchases of discounted Russian oil, which the U.S. President said helped to fund Moscow’s war against Ukraine.)
The Wall Street Journal reported that during the high-profile trip in India, Putin was “aiming to protect a partnership that is a crucial economic and diplomatic lifeline for Moscow.”
Vladimir Putin’s visit to New Delhi this week to meet with Narendra Modi is as much about showmanship as substance. https://t.co/xNgjHyLvk5
— Bloomberg (@business) December 5, 2025
On Friday, Putin and Modi announced that the two countries “finalized an economic cooperation program until 2030, which will help diversify mutual businesses to boost annual trade to $100 billion by 2030.”
Putin also offered Modi an “uninterrupted supply of Russian fuel” and said India will gain access to “a free trade zone” with the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), an economic bloc with five members: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. In December 2024, US adversary Iran was designated as an EAEU observer member.
[NOTE: In October Trump told reporters that Modi is “not going to buy much oil from Russia. He wants to see that war end as much as I do. He wants to see the war end with Russia, Ukraine, and as you know, they’re not going to be buying too much oil.”]
Lutnick’s timing (“a month or two”) may have been off, but the Commerce Secretary still has a chance to be right with his prediction that India will be eager to restart its U.S. trade relationship.
On Wednesday, a U.S. trade delegation led by Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Rick Switzer, will arrive in India to finalize the first part of a trade deal that could roll back Trump’s tariffs. Indian Commerce Secretary Rajesh Agrawal said of the forthcoming visit: “We are optimistic that we will find a solution this calendar year. What needs to come out first is a framework trade deal that can address the reciprocal tariffs.”