‘Refuses to pick up the phone’: Tensions explode after Trump’s latest move

He warmly held hands with Putin before spending 45 minutes in the back seat of the Russian President’s car.

And he’s taken every opportunity to slip behind the curtains to meet with President Xi and his officials.

The controversial Hindu Nationalist leader was in Tianjin, China, for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit over the weekend.

Trump last week declared he would impose punitive tariffs on India for continuing to purchase Russian oil despite sanctions over Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Indian products now face a 50 per cent surcharge when imported into the United States.

It’s a dramatic bust-up.

In the space of just six months, the relationship between the world’s two largest democracies has plummeted to its worst point in decades.

Prime Minister Modi told Indian expats in the US to vote for Trump during last year’s election campaign.

He was the first world leader to personally congratulate the 47th President shortly after Trump took office in February this year. Little wonder Trump proclaimed Modi to be a “true friend”.

Now, the two aren’t talking.

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Unconfirmed reports claim the Indian leader has refused to take several phone calls from Trump in recent weeks. And, in the wake of the 50 per cent tariffs, he’s instead been on the line to Putin and Xi.

That shift in dynamics has been evident at the Shanghai summit.

Modi posted photos and comments to social media emphasising the extent of his backseat diplomacy with the Russian President. “(We) reaffirmed our commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership,” he said.

And he and Xi “agreed on the importance of maintaining peace and tranquillity in border areas and reaffirmed our commitment to cooperation based on mutual respect, mutual interest and mutual sensitivity.”

Always a delight to meet President Putin! pic.twitter.com/XtDSyWEmtw

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 1, 2025

When a bromance breaks down

Putin took a page out of Trump’s playbook by adopting a backseat approach to diplomacy.

The US President broke with convention to invite the Russian leader to sit with him in his heavily armed and electronically-secured “Beast” limo during their talks in Alaska.

So Putin invited Modi into his own custom-built limo.

After the proceedings at the SCO Summit venue, President Putin and I travelled together to the venue of our bilateral meeting. Conversations with him are always insightful. pic.twitter.com/oYZVGDLxtc

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) September 1, 2025

“They were at home... They felt comfortable there, and that’s why they continued the conversation,” a Kremlin spokesman said.

It was a powerful symbol of the breakdown of US-India relations.

In 2015, President Barack Obama declared the US and India would form the “defining partnership” of the 21st Century.

In 2025, President Donald Trump has other ideas.

“New Delhi thought it could manage Trump well enough,” argues Foreign Policy analyst James Crabtree.

“Only belatedly has Modi’s team recognised its miscalculation.”

Moving closer to Washington had always been a gamble for New Delhi.

India has, since regaining freedom from Britain in 1947, generally adopted an independent, non-aligned stance towards international politics.

It sat on the fence during the Soviet-US Cold War. It picked and chose among international agreements and treaties. It avoided taking sides.

But Chinese aggression on India’s territories in the Himalayas and increased naval presence in the Indian Ocean over recent decades has caused New Delhi to shift its balance towards the US, Japan and Australia.

“To have this carefully cultivated partnership thrown back so abruptly by Trump has proven galling, generating domestic political uproar,” Crabtree observes.

Had a very good and detailed conversation with my friend President Putin. I thanked him for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine. We also reviewed the progress in our bilateral agenda, and reaffirmed our commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 8, 2025

“Confronted with Washington’s hostility, those in New Delhi who warned against trusting the Americans are taking a public victory lap.”

And the bromance breakdown has wide-reaching implications.

“This is not just a question for the US-India relationship,” argues former Australian high commissioner to India, Peter Varghese.

“It goes to the heart of the strategic congruence which has defined Australia-India relations.”

Oils ain’t oils

“They’re buying Russian oil, they’re fueling the war machine. And if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” Trump accused India last week.

This is the US President’s justification for applying 50 per cent tariffs to Indian goods.

But Modi sees things differently.

He insists India needs the cut-price oil to sustain its emerging economy. And he points out Europe is buying most of the refined Russian product anyway.

But the top-tier spat with Trump did not trigger India’s rapprochement with Russia and China.

That began in October last year, when Modi met Xi at the Beijing-led BRICS economic summit in Russia.

Trump’s transactional attitude towards geopolitics has only accelerated the process.

“Indian analysts believe that the Trump administration may be simultaneously moving closer to Beijing and Islamabad in order to peel Pakistan away from China,” argued Observer Research Foundation analysts Harsh Pant and Kalpit Manikikar.

“New Delhi, in turn, hopes that with its own pivot to China, it can exploit the first of these trends while preempting any negative fallout from the second.”

Modi’s 2024 meeting with Xi brought immediate results.

He’s clearly hoping to see similar outcomes with this week’s Shanghai summit.

Beijing has allowed Indian troops back onto some of their old patrol lines along the poorly defined border. They had been expelled in violent clashes in 2020.

Herders are allowed back into their mountaintop grazing lands. Pilgrims are no longer being turned away from holy sites on Mount Kailash, the Mansarovar and the Rakshastal lakes.

“Beyond all this, there are also fears that Trump is going soft in the strategic sphere,” the New Delhi-based analysts argue, pointing to the US President’s conciliatory tone towards Beijing in tariff talks and his refusal to allow Taiwanese officials to visit Washington.

“With its cautious reopening to Beijing, New Delhi is responding judiciously to a complex and evolving strategic environment,” they add. “India will continue to build its own domestic capacities while forging external partnerships with like-minded nations”.

Three’s a crowd. Four’s a crisis?

“Up to now, Australia saw India as a key element in the balancing of China, and we saw that balancing as led by the United States and including other countries, such as Japan, which, for their own reasons, were uncomfortable with a Chinese hegemony,” argues Varghese.

But President Trump’s transactional approach to geopolitics is threatening the emerging “Quad” alliance.

“The President’s instincts are unilateralist, whereas the Quad is premised on collective action,” Varghese adds. “Also, the Quad is primarily a geopolitical construct while Trump’s worldview is geo-economic at best.”

Canberra, long regarded as Washington’s “Deputy Sheriff” in Southeast Asia, may soon find itself forced to choose: Trump or Modi?

“The latest episode underlines the chronic fragility of the Quad: a grouping that risks being defined less by shared resolve among four democracies and more by the shifting calculus of one superpower,” warns Indian international relations analyst Sanchari Ghosh.

“Unlike Washington, which views the Quad largely through the prism of great-power rivalry with Beijing, India finds greater alignment with Japan and Australia – partners that, while wary of China, prioritise resilience, rule-making, and regional stability over outright confrontation,” Ghosh argues.

“Each member has faced the realities of China’s rise firsthand, and each has developed its own strategies for coping with Beijing’s assertiveness. What unites them is a shared need for strategic autonomy vis-à-vis both Washington and Beijing.”

Varghese, also a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, agrees.

He believes Australia and India will likely agree that further withdrawal of US interest in the region will require “compensating relationships”.

“This is the more likely outcome,” he adds. “Both countries have reached a point where each sees value in a deeper partnership irrespective of the trajectory of the US-India relationship.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social