India and the US Tariff War: The Unequal Politics of Neutrality

Co-authored by Ankit and Sadhika on October 02, 2025

The recent imposition of a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports by the United States has brought to the fore a question that is rarely addressed publicly in diplomatic circles: is neutrality a universally applicable moral principle or simply a status conferred (or withheld) by those who dominate the international system? The Trump administration’s move, announced in August 2025, doubled the existing 25 percent duty—initially reciprocal, then steepened as a penalty for India’s continued purchase of Russian oil. Estimates suggest this action jeopardizes up to 66 percent of India’s $86.5 billion in annual exports to the U.S., affecting labour-intensive sectors like textiles, gems, shrimp, furniture, and more—potentially slashing export volumes by 70 percent and dropping total shipments to just $49.6 billion in 2025–26.

When India began importing discounted Russian crude oil in the aftermath of the Ukraine conflict, Western commentary quickly settled upon a phrase at once accusatory and theatrical: the “laundromat of Russian oil.” It is a phrase designed less to describe than to condemn, and its currency illustrates the way in which language is pressed into the service of political convenience. The implication was that India’s purchases were mercenary, subversive of a moral order ostensibly upheld by Western sanctions, and at its worst, seeking to fund Russian interests against Ukraine, and by extension, the US.

But the charge rings hollow upon closer examination. European energy interests, too, remain closely tied to Russian hydrocarbons; indeed, it was India’s willingness to absorb and redirect Russian supplies that helped prevent crude oil prices from spiraling into catastrophic territory. The very stability of global energy markets—upon which European households and American consumers alike depend—was maintained in part by India’s pragmatism. Yet this nuance was elided in favour of a narrative of moral delinquency. It is easier to depict India as an unprincipled opportunist than to acknowledge the awkward truth: strategic autonomy in one part of the world was cushioning the impact of sanctions in another.

This inconsistency is hardly new. Where convenient, the United States has maintained partnerships with dictatorial regimes, armed militias whose methods it condemns in theory, and tolerated terrorist patrons when their cooperation served strategic ends. The Cold War abounded with such paradoxes, and more recent decades have seen little deviation from the pattern. To observe this is not to indulge in crude equivalence, but to point out the selectivity with which moral standards are applied.

Switzerland’s neutrality during the World Wars, so often romanticized, benefited from precisely this selectivity. Its discretion as a banker to regimes of all stripes, its accumulation of wealth whose origins were sometimes dubious, were treated not as transgressions but as the benign eccentricities of a small Alpine republic. Neutrality, in that instance, was not threatening but useful. India’s non-alignment, by contrast, is discomfiting precisely because of its scale: a continental state that refuses to be corralled, that insists upon judging its interests independently, unsettles the architecture of influence that others would prefer to remain unchallenged. 

India’s situation is altogether different. It is not a small, inconsequential banking hub; it is a civilizational state of 1.4 billion people, a rising economy, and an upcoming actor in the Indo-Pacific. Its decisions affect global trade routes, energy markets, and technological ecosystems. When India asserts its right to engage with multiple partners—buying oil where it is affordable, securing weapons where they are reliable, or trading where it is mutually beneficial—it does not serve the interests of one bloc at the expense of others; it serves its own. And therein lies the problem: a large, self-respecting nation that refuses to be conscripted into another’s strategic agenda is inconvenient.
 
To recognize this disparity is not to wallow in grievance but to clarify the stakes. India’s insistence on strategic autonomy is not an attempt to “get away” with something; it is an affirmation that sovereignty cannot be conditional. A world in which non-alignment is tolerated only when it is inconsequential is not a world of principle at all, but of hierarchy disguised as virtue. 

It is worth recalling that non-alignment, as conceived by India’s founding leaders, was never about passivity or moral grandstanding. It was about preserving freedom of action in a world divided by Cold War militarism. Today, as we face a more complex multipolar landscape, the logic is unchanged. India will partner with those who share its interests, oppose those who threaten its sovereignty, and avoid entanglements that compromise either. This is not opportunism; it is prudence.

Critics in the West, however, often measure Indian choices against their own geopolitical needs. When India declines to join sanctions regimes unrelated to its security, it is accused of enabling aggressors. When it opens its markets but protects critical sectors, it is branded protectionist. And when it engages with diverse partners—from Washington to Moscow, Tokyo to Riyadh—it is told that it is “hedging,” as if independence were a transgression. The benevolent bully working for the greater good is perhaps the most fitting oxymoron of our age, for it captures both the raw coercion and the sanctimonious self-image that animate so much of American foreign policy. It is a performance in which power masquerades as altruism, and the disciplining of sovereign nations is rebranded as the redemption of mankind.

India will persist nonetheless. We will pursue strategic autonomy because it is essential—to our security, to global balance, and to the principle that sovereignty cannot be conditional. In the end, the world will have to adapt to an India that is not aligned, but engaged; not beholden, but responsible; not neutral in isolation, but active in partnership. That is the future of international order, if fairness, rather than hypocrisy, is to prevail. And as history teaches us, powers that demand obedience without reciprocity eventually find that their credibility erodes faster than their influence.