On first official India trip, Rubio tries to halt a trust deficit between Washington and Delhi

NEW DELHI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is holding talks with his Indian counterpart Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Sunday as the two countries look to steady ties that have fallen to their lowest point in over two decades.

Rubio’s visit comes during an economic and diplomatic downturn between the United States and India, strained largely by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies that raised duties on several Indian exports.

Rubio arrived Saturday on his first official visit to India ahead of a meeting set for Tuesday with his counterparts from India, Australia and Japan, which are members of the Indo-Pacific strategic alliance known as the Quad.

“India is at the cornerstone of how the United States approaches the Indo-Pacific, and not just through the Quad, but bilaterally,” Rubio said in New Delhi.

His four-day visit will include a multicity tour and a gala reception in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

“In the past one year, statements and rhetoric coming from Washington on some of India’s most sensitive security concerns and trade matters have not been helpful and have created a trust deficit,” said Ashok Malik, a former policy adviser in India’s Foreign Ministry.

India and US have different priorities but shared concerns

“Certain misgivings will remain,” Malik added, noting Rubio’s visit will be considered an achievement if the talks somewhat stabilize the relationship and check further deterioration.

Experts say friction exists between U.S. global strategic ambitions and India’s priorities as an emerging middle power. Historically close to Russia, India has long shown unease as it moves closer to the U.S., which reflects India’s lingering distrust of American intentions rooted in cultural differences and Cold War-era instincts.

Still, India-U.S. ties steadily deepened over two decades into a broad, robust strategic partnership, increasingly shaped in recent years by shared concerns over China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and diplomatically articulated through the Quad forum.

The Quad has repeatedly accused China of flexing its military muscles in the South China Sea and aggressively pushing its maritime territorial claims. Beijing maintains that its military is purely defensive to protect what it says are China’s sovereign rights and calls the Quad an attempt to contain its economic growth and influence.

After the U.S. presidential inauguration in January 2025, Rubio’s first formal international engagement was meeting with the foreign ministers of the Quad countries jointly and in separate sessions.

However, a series of events since last year have brought the diplomatic relationship to a low point.

Pakistan and Russian oil cause tensions

Despite close ties and often being perceived as ideological allies, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi downplayed Trump’s role in brokering a ceasefire after a brief India-Pakistan military conflict triggered by the April 2025 massacre of mostly Hindu tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir. But Pakistan openly courted Trump and even advocated the Nobel Peace Prize for him.

Economic tensions followed, with the Trump administration imposing tariffs on India over its discounted purchases of Russian oil that further strained ties between the two countries.

“In India, there is some skepticism about U.S. policy and predictability,” said Malik, who heads the India chapter of The Asia Group advisory firm in the U.S. He said what has happened in the past year between India and the U.S. “can’t be forgotten or erased easily.”

When the Iran war broke out in February, the U.S. stepped up engagement with Pakistan, which positioned itself as a mediator between Washington and Tehran, deepening unease in New Delhi. Trump’s recent, high-profile visit to China has only added to India’s discomfort.

India-U.S. relations are challenging “due to a few structural tensions and Trump only brought them to the fore,” said Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“New Delhi’s foreign policy, increasingly colored by its domestic politics, has become more black-and-white in the last decade, as evidenced by its deep discomfort with the U.S.’s ties with Pakistan and its moves toward detente with China,” Donthi said.

Experts say these shifts reflect the growing complexity of India-U.S. relations rooted in shared strategic interests, yet increasingly shaped by competing priorities and a shifting geopolitical landscape.

“New Delhi is likely to exercise strategic patience and wait for Trump to leave office,” Donthi said. “India would hope that the bipartisan consensus on India in the U.S. survives his term and that it can start building on that again.”

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Hussain reported from Srinagar, India.