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Washington and New Delhi for years had touted their relationship as the best success story of U.S. alliances after the Cold War, having closely coordinated on defense and foreign policy for over 20 years. But as a rift over trade and oil deepens, their once sturdy partnership has hit one of its lowest points.

“In many ways, this is a moment in the U.S.-India relationship where the premises and assumptions of the last 25 years — that everybody worked very hard to build, including the president in his first term — have just come completely unraveled,” Evan Feigenbaum, a South Asia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said. “The trust is gone.”

The deterioration of ties in recent weeks has followed President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to hit Indian imports with tariffs after New Delhi refused to end its purchases of Russian crude oil despite the war in Ukraine. The U.S. tariff on India is currently set at 25 percent but is set to rise to 50 percent on August 27. The policy aimed to force India to change its buying habits, but in practice, it has instead pushed India to further strengthen its relationship with both Moscow and Beijing.

In the past several weeks alone, India’s national security adviser visited Moscow, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar conducted high-level meetings there, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded talks in New Delhi. India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is also expected to travel to China for the first time in over seven years, while Russian President Vladimir Putin is also set to host Modi in Moscow before the end of the year. Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar has also suggested that Russia is open to increased sales of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to India.

“The whole idea, of course, of this messaging on Russia is that it is both economic — you get stuff at a discount, a very substantial discount,” Feigenbaum said. “But it is also a bit of messaging by Modi to domestic audiences. This is a country that prides itself on foreign policy independence. And one thing they’re signaling very clearly is that they view that as interference in India’s foreign policy, and they are not going to put up with it.”

Trump’s tariffs are not the only reason India has begun tilting toward Moscow and Beijing, however. Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst at the Washington-based Wilson Center, said that “we’ve seen indications for almost a year of India wanting to ease tensions with China and strengthen relations, mainly for economic reasons. But the Trump administration’s policies have made India want to move even more quickly.”

Some of New Delhi’s actions, he added, have been posturing, while others are part of a more fundamental shift. “The question is to what degree India is going to use this to then develop, to entrench closer relationships on the economic and the defense side with Russia, and those parts are not performative,” Feigenbaum said.

India had already been working to diversify its arms purchases in recent years, even before the Ukraine war, turning to American, French, and Israeli weapons systems to buy down its over-reliance on Russian weapons. But after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, trade with Moscow in energy has more than doubled. Kugelman said it showed that New Delhi has decided the U.S. “can’t be trusted, whereas Russia can — because Russia is always going to be there for India no matter what.”

The logic also allows Modi to burnish his reputation at home as an independent leader who will not bow to foreign pressure. In particular, he has underscored his pledge to prioritize Indian farmers, small businesses, and young job seekers — a line with clear domestic political benefits. Kugelman said Modi has also already given India away to Washington over issues like reducing tariffs and bringing Indian workers back to the U.S. “Because of those concessions, India needs to be careful about signaling further willingness to bend,” he said. “This is one reason there was no trade deal — Modi put his foot down.”

In the U.S., exasperation with India’s refusal to fully stand with Washington is mounting. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, in an op-ed published in the Financial Times, wrote that India was engaging in “opportunistic and deeply corrosive oil purchases from Russia” and that Trump’s tariffs were intended to target India “where it hurts — its access to U.S. markets — even as it seeks to cut off the financial lifeline it has extended to Russia’s war effort.”

The weakening ties represent a significant departure from the goodwill of the relationship just over a decade ago. The two countries struck a civil nuclear deal in 2008 that, despite India’s decision not to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), gave India access to American fuel and technology. At the time, the two sides managed to compartmentalize their disagreement over India’s non-NPT status and keep it from bleeding into other issues.

Today, that goodwill has all but evaporated. The U.S. for years has considered India a key part of its Indo-Pacific strategy of shoring up democratic partners to counterbalance China under Obama, Trump, and Biden. While in recent years, differences over trade and India’s defense ties with Russia have not spilled over into strategic and defense cooperation, the current rift could lead to problems in those areas as well.

“If the U.S.-India relationship continues this free fall, it will be very difficult to sustain,” Kugelman said. “Countering China has been the glue binding this relationship.”

Feigenbaum also noted an irony in how the relationship with India has developed. “Then, India was leveraging its partnership to signal to then-foe China that it had options,” he said. “Now they’re working with the Chinese to signal Washington rather than the other way around.”