US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has drawn a red line for the India‑US relationship and said President Donald Trump will not repeat the mistake that the United States’ made with China — granting market access and then watching that access be leveraged to beat Western companies.
US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau has drawn a red line for the India‑US relationship and said President Donald Trump will not repeat the mistake that the United States’ made with China — granting market access and then watching that access be leveraged to beat Western companies.
At a session at Raisina Dialogues 2026, Landau on Thursday said that the India-US trade and economic relationship will be such that it is fair to Americans.
Landau said, “India should understand that we’re not going to make the same mistakes that we made with China 20 years ago in terms of saying, ‘Oh, you know, we’re going to let you be able to develop all these markets and then, you know, the next thing we know is you’re beating us in in a lot of commercial events.’”
Landau further said that the Trump administration will make sure that any trade and economic relationship with India “is fair to our people because, ultimately, we have to be accountable to our own people just as the Government of India has to be accountable to its people”.
As for the India-US trade deal, Landau said negotiations are “almost at the finish line”.
In his second term, Trump has pursued self-declared course correction in policies related to trade, economy, and diplomacy. He has used tariffs and other means, such as political and military coercion, to seek favourable terms from countries after claiming they had received disproportionate benefits from trade and economic ties with the United States under previous administrations.
‘We’re rethinking lots of considerations for unthought for a long time’
Elaborating on the foreign policy in his second term, Landau said Trump has initiated the rethinking of lots of considerations that had not been thought over for a long time, such as the nature of the American relationship with the United Kingdom or Russia.
While the US foreign policy was aimed at containing Soviet Union in the Cold War, there was no rethinking of the foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, according to Landau.
Between the collapse of the Soviet Union and Trump’s second term, the US foreign policy did not have any basis until ‘America First’ became policy, Landau said.
“Our foreign policy had become increasingly bureaucratic and no longer subject to the desires of the president, who is after all the elected representative of our people and has the control of foreign policy under Article 2 of our Constitution. We have seen that basically our whole foreign policy process was really more concerned with the process itself rather than the results it would yield,” said Landau.
Such a situation had pushed the United States into the grips of a “toxic brew of morality and impotence” when leaders felt they had to go around the world lecturing people about values.
“But, then, frankly, when other countries would do things that were very much against our interests, we would just, you know, express concern or issue a strongly worded letter,” Landau further said.
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