The Modi-Trump talks in France were significant. But all around it should worry every strategist in New Delhi.

A former U.S. National Security Advisor warning in public that U.S. foreign policy is a "dangerous sidelining" of the U.S.'s "most strategically vital partners" isn't a diplomatic footnote. This is a fire alarm. But, in the din of G7 sideline bonhomie and the tariff wars, what John Bolton told in an interview this week the rise of a US-China G2 framework and its implications for India should be read again, and read carefully.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with Donald Trump this week on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Evian, France, which was described by most reports as "warm" but light on content. Bolton said that it was not immediately obvious that much positive was accomplished in terms of deliverables from the meeting but that the two leaders were able to meet in person after “over 18 months” was important.” This lack of in-person interaction says a lot. But what's in that void where US strategic thinking really has gone is what's important, and the answer is that.

Since the Busan summit with China's Xi Jinping in October 2025, Trump has defined the U.S.-China dynamic in a way not seen by any U.S. president in decades. Trump has called the meeting a “G2” meeting, and hailed his meeting with Xi as a “12 out of 10.” Hours later his Secretary of Defense met with the Chinese Defense Minister, noting the improving relationship between the two countries. The words were clear. Washington was accommodating Beijing in a manner it had not done since the Nixon days and New Delhi was observing on the sidelines.

Bolton outright rejected this G2 approach, which is a dangerous sidelining of India, and emphasized the importance of enhanced India-US strategic cooperation to deal with China's Indo-Pacific outreach. More biting still was his criticism of tariff policy: Bolton stated his personal opposition to Trump's tariff program, which, “on a global scale, is a big mistake,” and that it has been “particularly unfairly” used against India, “much more so than against China.”

It is not an economic grievance alone that that imbalance in tariff treatment is complained of. It's a structural message as to where Washington's priorities are right now, and the numbers are telling.

In mid-2025, the Indian economy was slapped with the highest import tax on goods imported from India to the United States at 50 percent, in the midst of Trump's tariff escalation. The levies had cast doubts on Modi's plans to turn India into a big manufacturing hub and posed a challenge to India's export competitiveness with other nations such as China and Vietnam. Meanwhile, following the thaw in the Busan summit, Trump had cut the tariff rate on Chinese goods by 10 percent which now makes the average tariff rate on the Chinese goods cheaper than Indian and Brazilian goods. Did you read that last sentence again? A nation which has troops probing disputed Himalayan borders was paying less to access American markets than the country Washington considers a strategic partner.

According to India's Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran, the 50% tariff may affect India's GDP by 0.5-0.6% during the financial year and if that uncertainty was carried forward to the next year then the damage would be more. Barclays forecast GDP growth to slow by 30 basis points as a result of the high tariff regime. Both Nomura and Elara Capital had an estimate of 20 basis point impact. The cumulative impact was authentic: India's export industries, based on cheap labor, such as textiles, jewellery, engineering goods, were at a competitive disadvantage to their competitors in Vietnam and Bangladesh, who were quietly leveraging it.

In February 2026, a partial reset came. The interim trade deal lowered the U.S. tariff rates on Indian exports to 18%, from 50% before, and pledged $500 billion in U.S. purchases over five years, with emphasis on agriculture, semiconductors, and critical minerals. But there were strings attached to that deal. Even as trade negotiations between the two nations are ongoing, the Office of the US Trade Representative has called for a further 12.5% tariffs on imports from 60 economies, which includes India. The uncertainty is not gone; it's just transformed.

But Bolton's more serious point is that it is not really about tariffs. It's all about strategy and that is where the warning has the most meaning. Bolton said what he really hopes for is a discussion with Modi and Trump about how to handle the Chinese threat a discussion that always becomes bogged down in a discussion about trade issues in both Trump terms. It's a statement to the chase of the issue. The US-India relationship has been becoming more and more transactional and it should be more fundamental.

India began 2025 with optimism that it would be able to move forward US-India strategic relations under Trump 2.0 thanks to goodwill, personal chemistry between the two leaders and their strong interest in China's counter. However, like most countries, India underestimated the domestic priorities of the incoming administration as well as the extremely personal nature of Trump's decision-making process. But Trump's legendary ability to make everything personal has paradoxically prevented the relationship from collapsing at the leadership level despite all the structural cracks that have been growing at lower levels.

The G2 question is no abstract one. The announcement is a reminder of longstanding worries that the economic growth of India may result in its marginalisation as the US and China seek bilateral solutions to global problems. If supply-chain decisions are done without India, then its reliance on Chinese imports of electronics, pharmaceuticals, and critical minerals will become even more problematic. Let's take the data: India and China's bilateral trade has been $96.46 billion, as of November 2025, China remains India's number one import market and fourth export destination. India cannot ignore this economic bind and for that reason it cannot afford to be left out of the strategic table where the future of that relationship is being determined.

Trump's revival of the G2 concept is a throwback to the past and a view of the order-building that ignores the spread of power in the current multipolar shift. The G2 concept is a normatively exclusionary and strategically limiting one. That analysis, from East Asia Forum, dovetails with what a variety of regional powers from Tokyo to Canberra to Jakarta have been saying quietly since Busan. No one in Asia other than Beijing benefits from the world being guided by two principals whose differences they wish to settle at everyone else's expense.

Bolton's answer in the same interview was clear regarding where the institutional response to this lies: the Quad. He suggested that China's pursuit of control of the Indo-Pacific periphery is one of the big issues of the 21st century and that Quad cooperation should not be limited to the level of diplomacy but should also involve intelligence sharing, military coordination, and other security consultations. He also proposed to bring South Korea and Singapore into some of the Quad activities.

However, the absence of a Quad leaders' summit in India in 2025 has affected the momentum in the group, despite not having much contact with leaders because of challenges in the bilateral relationship, especially on trade and tariffs and the India-Pakistan conflict. Just at the moment when the need for a credible counter-weight to China's maritime and economic expansion has grown, the institutional structure that has been developed gradually over a number of years has slowed down.

The economic tale is equally illustrative. India's bilateral trade with the USA has reached $140 billion as of FY 26-27, and measures such as Pax Silica, and the Quad countries' pledge of around $20 billion in critical mineral supply chains in the Indo-Pacific, are deeper arrangements that have India getting increasingly integrated into trusted supply chains and US-led technology ecosystems. These are positive gestures. Yet they coexist with a tariff structure that at least until the end of 2025 inflicts more pain on India than China, while China's coast guard steps up pressure in the South China Sea and PLA troops maintain forward positions along the Himalayan border.

The India-China thaw has a certain strategic relevance in a more turbulent geo-political climate with Trump back in the White House, and both Beijing and New Delhi have been made more vulnerable by Trump's disruptive policies, it has made the stability of their own bilateral relations even more important. It's rather an awkward fit for Washington, which is trying to line up India as its main strategic ally against Chinese influence, considering that it's the U.S. that has unwittingly enabled America's two biggest populations to develop a tactical alliance.

The Modi-Trump meeting in France is significant not so much in what it yielded, but in what it symbolizes: a pivot, of sorts, neither party has fully embraced. It's personal chemistry for sure, and Trump's words in France, that the US would stand with India as long as Modi was at the helm, was the kind of soundbite that makes headlines. However, presidential love is not enough for statecraft. It needs institutional design, trade regimes that reflect a commitment to partnership, and strategic dialogue beyond trade.

What Bolton was saying this week, with all the wit of Trump's former advisers, is the U.S. is sleepwalking in to a geopolitical construct that is contrary to the very geopolitical logic it has spent two decades developing. Not only does it push India aside, but a G2 world where Washington and Beijing run the show in Asia. It undermines the whole premise of the Quad, downgrades the Indo-Pacific agenda carefully built by both Republic and Democratic administrations, and gives China the strategic justification that has been eluding it since the ‘70s.

The now question is whether the warm encounter in France marks the beginning of a true strategic reset one that transcends tariff wrangling and personal chemistry or the latest photo op at the sidelines of a meeting neither side was particularly keen to attend. The former is not only preferable but is imperative in the Indo-Pacific context, where much is at stake. It is necessary.