New Delhi: US President Donald Trump may have thought his tariff threats would make India blink, but a new paper by an IIM Udaipur professor says he got the country badly wrong.
The paper, by Professor Kunal Kamal Kumar and published in Third World Quarterly, looks at the 2025 US-India clash over Russian oil and arrives at a simple conclusion: tariff pressure was used as a weapon, but it did not deliver the result Washington wanted.
According to the paper, the US tried to push India into changing its Russian oil policy by threatening steep tariffs on Indian goods. But India did not see this as a small diplomatic issue. For New Delhi, this was about energy security, economic stability and national interest. When a country like India gets access to cheaper crude, that is not just foreign policy talk. It affects inflation, transport, industry and the lives of ordinary people.
That is why the paper says India’s stand was built around sovereignty, energy security and strategic autonomy. In plain language, the message was clear: decisions on India’s energy needs will be taken in Delhi, not under pressure from Washington.
This is also where the Narendra Modi government comes into the picture. The paper says PM Modi’s refusal to bend fits India’s larger line of strategic autonomy. Put simply, India under PM Modi has tried to show that it can work with all major powers, but it will not take decisions against its own interests just because another country applies pressure.
The paper also makes an important economic point. Tariffs are often presented as punishment for the other side. But in reality, they hurt the country using them as well. When the US puts tariffs on Indian goods, American importers pay more, supply chains get hit, prices rise, and consumers feel the burden. So this is not some magic weapon that hurts only India. It can hurt the US, too.
That is why the paper calls tariff threats a blunt tool. They create noise. They create pressure. But they do not always create surrender. In fact, sometimes they do the opposite. They harden the target’s stand, push trade into new channels and make the pressured country even more determined to stand on its own feet.
The paper points out that this dispute was not just about oil. It was also about a changing world. Countries like India are no longer willing to quietly accept Western pressure when their core interests are involved. The old habit of using economic force to make others fall in line is not working as easily as before.
The paper presents India’s policy as pragmatism. India imports most of its crude. Any government in Delhi has to think first about affordable supply, domestic stability and the national economy. Seen from that angle, buying discounted oil was not some reckless move. It was a practical decision taken in India’s interest.
The paper assumes significance as the IIM professor argues that Trump’s pressure tactic had limits, that tariff wars hurt both sides, and that India’s stand was rooted in hard national interest.
In the end, the takeaway is straightforward. Trump tried to use tariff pressure to make India fall in line. India did not. And according to this paper, that refusal was not a moment of defiance for the sake of optics. It was part of a bigger shift in how India under PM Modi now deals with the world: engage with everyone, protect national interest, and do not bend on matters of sovereignty and energy security.
(AINS)
