The repoliticization of bilateral relations is a slow-motion catastrophe.
carnegieendowment.org
Howard Lutnick says "in a month or two India will be at the table and they're going to say they're sorry." To that, I say this: There may indeed be a TARIFF deal on the table because it is in both countries' interest to do one.
But (1) India most certainly will not "say sorry,"
(2) the administration has tanked 25 years of bipartisan work to depoliticize the U.S.-India relationship, which is now thoroughly politicized in New Delhi, even among those who worked hard to build the relationship;
(3) India has little to no reason to trust the United States after the administration made an elective choice to tank the relationship by undoing even the achievements with New Delhi from President Trump's own first term
(4) this is especially true because the administration elected to wield a sanctions-like instrument against India, repeatedly refers to tariffs as "sanctions," and thus has stirred up every conceivable bad historical memory and neuralgia about Washington in India from the past
(5) a tariff deal is a very weak reed for the U.S.-India relationship because, as South Korea especially has learned, the President changes his mind often and so the United States frequently ends up re-litigating the deals it has made; to put that bluntly, a "deal" is not necessarily a deal and no country should assume that a "deal" is the end of the story
(6) the administration's footsie with Pakistan's military hasn't helped and somebody probably should have realized that; and
(7) politics runs in both directions, so on the American side the overt racism against Indians that this whole episode has brought into the open among some parts of the American body politic is both disgusting and a hornet's nest - if you don't believe that, spend some time reading around this very platform. My blunt conclusion is that a more intellectually honest appraisal of the situation would be the one I offered several weeks ago in an essay for @CarnegieEndow: Lutnick is correct that a tariff deal is entirely possible - and he would know because he and his colleagues tried to negotiate one and actually nearly did the deed; but trust is hard to build, harder to sustain, and hardest of all to rebuild once it evaporates in a morass of politicization. And we are THERE. A politicized and toxic relationship isn't easily reversible with a tariff deal because a tariff deal is not, in fact, a magic wand. And as I learned a long time ago, domestic politics nearly always trumps foreign policy, and foreign policy arguments almost never prevail unless they are anchored by a strong domestic political foundation. I don't see that strong foundation right now on either side. But if folks want to wait for India to "say sorry," I wish them a long wait.
