Why It Matters

The U.S.-India strategic partnership has long rested on a shared interest in countering China's rise, deepening defense trade, and anchoring a free and open Indo-Pacific. What the CRS report makes clear is that the second Trump Administration's actions in 2025 have disrupted each of those pillars simultaneously.

A sweeping Congressional Research Service report on India-U.S. relations, updated May 4, lands at a moment when two decades of carefully constructed strategic partnership appear more fragile than at any point in recent memory. The report, titled "India-U.S. Relations: Issues for Congress," runs hundreds of pages and covers everything from semiconductor supply chains to Kashmir. Its central message is hard to miss: a relationship that five successive administrations built into a cornerstone of U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy is now burdened by compounding friction — and Congress has both the tools and the responsibility to shape what comes next.

In August 2025, President Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on Indian imports, then doubled it after citing India's purchases of Russian oil. India's foreign ministry called the actions "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable." Calls for boycotts of American goods emerged in India. PM Narendra Modi, who had spent years cultivating a personal rapport with Trump, came under domestic political pressure. Analysts in both countries warned that the U.S. was pushing India toward closer ties with Russia and China — the very outcome U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy was designed to prevent.

"Long-held doubts about American fickleness and unreliability are now surfacing with a vengeance in India's political arena," one scholar quoted in the report wrote. "A carefully tended partnership that was once mutually beneficial is now at substantial risk."

The stakes extend beyond bilateral diplomacy. India is the world's most populous country and fifth-largest economy. Its territory straddles critical sea lanes. It holds an estimated 180 nuclear warheads. And it sits at the center of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, the informal grouping with the United States, Japan, and Australia that Washington has treated as the flagship vehicle for Indo-Pacific security cooperation.

The Big Picture

The report traces more than two decades of U.S.-India defense cooperation, from the formal launch of a strategic partnership in 2005 through the reinvigoration of the Quad in 2017 and the Biden-era initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology. That trajectory, the report suggests, is now in question.

The second Trump Administration has yet to articulate a formal Indo-Pacific strategy. The 2025 National Security Strategy, per the report, "downplayed India's role as compared to previous iterations." More striking, the 2026 National Defense Strategy made no mention of India or the Quad at all — a notable omission that some experts described as signaling "the era of strategic altruism toward India appears to be over."

The administration's handling of the May 2025 India-Pakistan military conflict deepened the wound. After a four-day clash triggered by an Islamist terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir, Trump publicly claimed credit for brokering a ceasefire and offered to "mediate" the Kashmir dispute. India's government issued a translated statement offering a different account and reiterating its longstanding opposition to third-party mediation. Indian officials reportedly expressed frustration that the U.S. appeared to treat India and Pakistan as equals — or worse, to favor Pakistan, including by hosting Pakistan's army chief at the White House in June 2025.

The tariff and diplomatic turbulence has had a measurable strategic consequence: India began repairing ties with China. In July 2025, India's foreign minister visited Beijing for the first time since 2019. PM Modi met with President Xi in August. By early 2026, Indian regulators were reportedly easing restrictions on Chinese investment that had been imposed after a deadly 2020 border clash. One Washington-based expert wrote that "Trump is weakening the hands of those in India who advocate for closer ties to the United States."

Trade and the Interim Agreement

On the trade front, the picture is complicated. In February 2026, the U.S. and India announced a framework for an Interim Agreement, under which the United States committed to reducing its 25 percent tariff on India to 18 percent, and India committed to eliminate or reduce tariffs on U.S. industrial goods, a range of agricultural products, and to purchase $500 billion in U.S. energy and other products over five years.

But the agreement's future is uncertain. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the President to impose tariffs — the legal basis for much of the tariff architecture applied to India. India canceled a planned trade delegation visit to Washington amid the uncertainty. Negotiations are ongoing, but as the report notes, the bilateral trade relationship remains "in flux."

U.S. goods and services trade with India more than doubled from $109 billion to $241 billion between 2015 and 2025. India was the United States' ninth-largest source of goods trade deficit in 2025, at $58 billion. The U.S. Trade Representative has characterized India's tariff rates as "the highest of any major world economy."

Defense Cooperation: Deep but Strained

U.S.-India defense cooperation remains extensive. In October 2025, the two countries signed a third 10-year defense framework agreement, described by the Pentagon as "the most ambitious and wide-ranging document yet." Foreign Military Sales to India have exceeded $25 billion since 2008. The two militaries conduct large-scale joint exercises across all services. India is now the largest operator of C-17 and P-8I aircraft outside the United States.

Under the INDUS Innovation initiative, the parties are discussing co-production of advanced F414 jet engines, Stryker armored vehicles, and Javelin anti-armor missiles. In May 2025, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the work with India to increase "operational coordination and interoperability."

Yet the report flags persistent tensions. Indian observers have expressed concern about delays in planned General Electric jet engine deliveries, raising questions about U.S. reliability as a defense partner. A Delhi-based analyst quoted in the report captured a common Indian view: "Many in India do not view the USA as a reliable partner due to the sanctions imposed on India earlier and also due to the close control it exercises on the deployment and employment of its defense equipment."

India's close defense relationship with Russia — its top supplier of defense articles — remains a live issue. Potential sanctions under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which targets significant transactions with Russia's defense sector, hang over the relationship. Congress has previously considered but not enacted CAATSA waivers for India.

Political Stakes

For the administration, the core tension is between its transactional instincts on trade and immigration and the strategic imperative of keeping India inside the U.S.-led Indo-Pacific architecture. The 2026 National Defense Strategy's silence on India and the Quad has alarmed analysts who see those frameworks as essential to deterring China.

For Republicans in Congress, the report surfaces a fault line between members who support the administration's tariff posture and those who view India as too important a strategic partner to antagonize. The House-passed version of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act included language on Indo-Pacific defense partnerships emphasizing Japan, the Philippines, and Australia — but made no mention of India. The Senate-passed version, by contrast, explicitly called for broadening U.S. engagement with India, both bilaterally and through the Quad.

For Democrats, the report's extensive documentation of human rights concerns — democratic backsliding, religious freedom violations, and the alleged Indian government-linked plot to assassinate a Sikh activist on U.S. soil — provides grounds to press for accountability even as the strategic partnership is defended. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended annually since 2020 that India be designated a Country of Particular Concern. The Trump Administration has not publicly addressed the criminal case involving the alleged assassination plot.

For the public, the implications are concrete: the H-1B visa program, which affects hundreds of thousands of Indian workers in the United States, has been subject to new fees and enhanced vetting. More than 360,000 Indian students attended U.S. colleges in the 2024-2025 academic year. And the Indian-American community, roughly five million strong and among the highest-earning demographic groups in the country, is increasingly active in domestic politics.

The Bottom Line

The CRS report is, at its core, a warning. The U.S.-India strategic partnership was built over 25 years by five administrations of both parties on the premise that a stronger, more prosperous democratic India benefits the United States. That premise has not changed. What has changed is the operational environment.

Trump Administration tariffs, the handling of the India-Pakistan conflict, the sidelining of India in key strategy documents, and friction over immigration have collectively created what the report describes as "consequential and lasting damage" to the relationship — even as trade negotiations and defense cooperation continue. The Quad, once described by a senior House committee member as "a defining relationship of the 21st century," has not held a summit-level meeting under the second Trump Administration, and at least one former official described it as "on the verge of obsolescence."

Congress has tools available: legislation on defense industrial integration, technology cooperation, trade framework oversight, CAATSA waivers, and human rights accountability. Whether it uses them — and how — may determine whether the U.S.-India relationship stabilizes or continues to drift at a moment when China is actively working to fill the gap.

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