Based on a leaked 10-minute audio from Cruz’s two private meetings with his donors, news publisher Axios said that the Texas Senator wanted the US President to accept a trade deal with India, which was opposed by Vice President JD Vance, White House economic advisor Peter Navarro, and sometimes Trump himself.
“You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week,” Cruz is reportedly heard telling his donors in one of the meetings.
The leaked audio is significant both for America’s domestic and foreign policy. Cruz has become, arguably, the biggest voice of dissent within the Trump administration in its second term.
It’s been 13 hours since the report was published, and Cruz has posted at least three times on the social media platform X since then. Yet, he has yet to make a public statement denying or confirming the report. Trump and Vance’s spokesperson declined a request for comment from Axios.
What the leaked clipping also shows is that there’s support for India within the White House and the Republican Party. Axios got the leaked audio from a Republican source, the report added.
The possibility of a trade deal between India and the US has consistently faded significantly from a year ago, when Trump took office, after a series of disappointments, including the imposition of a 50% tariff on the goods exported from the subcontinent to the US.
Going into the mid-term elections in the US this year, Cruz’s candour may provide more ammunition for Trump critics, strengthened by the impact of the tariffs on the US economy.
“Using high-frequency, shipment-level data covering over 25 million transactions and nearly $4 trillion in trade value, we provide unambiguous evidence that US importers bear nearly all the cost of the 2025 tariffs,” a research report by the German think-tank Kiel Institute, released in Jan 2026, said.
According to the latest poll data reported by the Economist, the president’s net approval rating is down 19% to 37%, 2 percentage points down since last week. More than half of those surveyed do not approve of Trump’s policies.
Meanwhile, America’s credibility in international affairs has hit an all-time low as Trump went from imposing tariffs on all trading partners to threatening an invasion of an allied territory.
America’s push for greater access to India’s agriculture and dairy sectors, Trump’s attempt to claim credit for ending the May 2025 escalation in the India-Pakistan conflict, and Washington’s new immigration policy are just some of the most significant hurdles to a possible deal even after several rounds of negotiations.
Read more: The end of pretence may speed up the transition to a new world order.
First Published: Jan 26, 2026 9:05 AM IST
