India, Aug. 15 -- President Donald Trump's coercive tariffs on India and indulgence of Pakistan have turned euphoria about India-US partnership under his leadership into bewildered dismay and rage. The sequence and the corrosive language suggest that tariffs are a manifestation and expression of problems beyond trade. It also betrays our lack of economic leverage unlike China's. Various reasons have been attributed to his decisions that do not bear repeating here. There is politicisation of the relationship in the US not seen in the past three decades, with the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideologue, joining the chorus of criticism on India's purchase of Russian oil.

In India, there ...