"If India wants to be treated like a U.S. ally, it has to start acting like one," he said. His comments came after the US mounted pressure on trade with U.S. President Donald Trump on March 5th, saying India responded to his demands very well on trade and announced that the US will impose a 25% tariff on Indian goods this month, making Indian tariffs on imports 50%.

Trade and Energy Concerns
India was a "global clearinghouse" for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into refined exports and giving Moscow needed dollars, Navarro said. He also recommended that India's growing links to Russia and China were threatening to undermine the transfer of sophisticated U.S. military technology.

India's foreign ministry has said it was being unfairly singled out for bringing in oil, noting that Western countries were also still trading with Russia.

Indian Oil Corp, the country's largest refiner, in the meantime, said it would continue buying Russian crude as long as it was viable. The Russian oil made up 24% of processing in the June quarter, up from a 22 percent average for 2024/25, finance chief Anuj Jain said. However, they are buying at discounts of around $1.50 a barrel to the Dubai benchmark.

Shifting Alliances and Trade Strains
And the geopolitical context only heightens the tensions. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of the month, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has started talks in New Delhi this week over the contested border.

Those are the developments as a U.S. visit by trade negotiators, scheduled for the end of the month in New Delhi, have been called off, slowing negotiations over a potential trade deal and leaving India to cope with constrained tariffs and less of the grace period than India was expecting to get from Trump, whommer Indian officials have met and realigned themselves with.