President Donald Trump has reportedly been pushing India to purchase more of its military hardware from the United States, dangling relief from the heavy tariffs he might impose against the other BRICS nations as an incentive.
Trump told a House Republican retreat in Florida on Tuesday that countries like China, India, and Brazil have not hesitated to use economic leverage to advance their national interests.
“We’re going to put tariffs on outside countries and outside people that really mean harm to us. Well, they mean us harm, but they basically want to make their country good,” Trump said.
“Look at what others do. China is a tremendous tariff maker, and India and Brazil and so many other countries. So we’re not going to let that happen any longer because we’re going to put America first,” he said.
China, India, and Brazil are three of the founding members of the BRICS economic group. The fourth was Russia; South Africa joined soon after the bloc was formed in 2009, adding the “S” at the end of its name. BRICS added over a dozen new members and “partners” over the past two years, seeking to build a membership roster that could rival organizations like the Group of Seven nations (G7).
BRICS enthusiasts might take some comfort in knowing that the Biden administration essentially ignored them, while Donald Trump takes them very seriously indeed. Trump has threatened to wallop BRICS with heavy tariffs if the bloc made any attempt to replace the U.S. dollar as the preferred currency for international trade – a move China and Russia are particularly eager to make.
“We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency, nor back any other currency to replace the mighty US dollar or, they will face 100 per cent tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful US economy,” Trump said in December.
“If the BRICS nations want to do that, that’s okay, but we’re going to put at least a 100 per cent tariff on the business they do with the United States,” he said shortly after his inauguration in January, strongly implying that he does not really think it would be okay.
Trump said on Monday that “everything came up” in a phone call with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will be “coming to the White House next month, probably in February.”
The Deccan Herald noted the Indian government curiously refrained from posting a readout of this phone call, while the White House cheerfully described it as a “productive” discussion of “regional issues, including security in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe.”
“The President emphasized the importance of India increasing its procurement of American-made security equipment and moving toward a fair bilateral trading relationship,” the White House added.
The Deccan Herald saw a message in the linkage between those two issues, noting that India has “contracted for more than $20 billion worth of U.S.-origin defense articles since 2008,” but Trump seemingly wants India to buy more American products to “lessen its dependence on Russia for advanced military hardware.”
India is the world’s largest arms importer and, while Russia remains its top supplier, it has been making a pronounced shift toward Western weapons over the past 15 years. The U.S. designated India as a “Major Defense Partner” in 2016, then granted it Strategic Trade Authorization Tier 1 status in 2018. Both of those designations confer concrete benefits for the purchase of military and dual-use equipment. India’s purchase of American hardware commensurately soared from almost nothing in 2008 to more than $20 billion in 2020.
Despite this rapid growth, the U.S. is actually in third place as a supplier of arms to India. Russia is still number one, and France is number two. Russia’s share of the Indian arms trade dropped from 58 percent in 2014 to 36 percent in 2023, while the U.S. now holds about 13 percent of the market.
The United States is, however, India’s largest trade partner overall, with about $120 billion in bilateral trade as of 2024. America buys about 18 percent of India’s exports. The contrast between bilateral trade and arms imports suggests Trump has a very large stick he can use to convince India it should buy more exploding carrots.
The response from Modi’s government to Trump’s tariff talk has been brisk and businesslike, which suggests some understandings might already have been reached behind the scenes. India has always been less enthusiastic about replacing the dollar than its BRICS colleagues, and while the Modi administration outspokenly values its good relations with Russia, it has reservations about entrusting too much of India’s economic future to a collective dominated by its great regional rival, China.
On Wednesday, sources in the Indian government told NDTV that India might cut its tariffs on certain high-end goods to appease Trump. Some of the products India imports from the United States have tariffs of 100 percent, the same burden Trump threatened to impose on BRICS.
“Trump’s tariffs tirade has been seen by many as a clear economic agenda, questionable though the means may be, and that is to jumpstart manufacturing in the U.S. By marking up the prices of key commodities like steel, semi-conductors, medicines, etc., he is hoping to do just that,” NDTV observed.
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