Explained: Why India–US Ties Are Holding Firm in 2025 Despite Political Strains

In 2025, the India–United States relationship presents a paradox. At the political level, ties appear strained — marked by U.S. trade sanctions, declining Indian exports to America, warming U.S.-Pakistan engagement, and the postponement of the Quad Leaders’ Summit that India was meant to host. Yet beneath this surface turbulence, the institutional foundations of cooperation between the two democracies remain active, resilient, and quietly expanding.

This dual-track dynamic — political friction alongside institutional momentum — explains why high-level visits, defence deals, and technology partnerships continue even as summitry slows.

The postponement of the Quad Leaders’ Summit was the most visible sign of diplomatic unease. Official communication around the delay has been opaque, but it coincided with broader challenges in India–US ties: rising U.S. tariffs on Indian goods, penalties linked to India’s purchase of Russian crude, and perceptions in New Delhi of a renewed U.S.–China pragmatism that sidelines Indian sensitivities.

India’s exports to the U.S. fell sharply in 2025, underscoring the economic impact of these frictions. Compounding this unease is Washington’s warming engagement with Pakistan, which has offered port access and critical mineral shipments to American firms — a transactional alignment driven by U.S. strategic and supply-chain imperatives.

Yet even amid these tensions, U.S. officials have repeatedly signalled that relations with India remain strategically vital, reflecting Washington’s balance-of-interest pragmatism rather than a strategic rupture.

Against this backdrop, visits by India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and the Indian Navy Chief to the U.S. acquire deeper significance. They underline a reality often missed in headline diplomacy: India–US cooperation today is sustained less by political symbolism and more by institutional depth.

Even as leaders manage diplomatic trade-offs, bureaucracies, armed forces, and technology agencies on both sides continue to engage through established mechanisms that operate independently of summit calendars.

The Quad’s relevance in 2025 did not hinge on a single summit. The Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting held in Washington in July 2025 launched initiatives spanning maritime security, counterterrorism, economic resilience, critical technologies, and humanitarian cooperation. In December 2025, the Quad Counterterrorism Working Group met for the third time, reinforcing operational continuity.

These engagements highlight how the Quad has matured into a functional platform whose work proceeds even when top-level political events are delayed — a sign of institutionalisation rather than fragility.

Defence remains the most stable pillar of India–US ties. Since the 2008 civil nuclear deal reshaped the relationship, military and security cooperation has steadily deepened. This trajectory culminated in October 2025 with the signing of a 10-year Defence Framework Agreement by India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, aimed at enhancing coordination, information sharing, and technological collaboration across the Indo-Pacific.

Regular joint exercises — Yudh Abhyas, Tiger Claw, and the Quad’s Malabar naval exercise — continue to build interoperability and trust, insulating defence ties from political volatility.

Over the past decade, India and the U.S. have constructed a dense architecture of agreements that now drives bilateral engagement. These include LEMOA (2016), COMCASA (2018), BECA (2020), the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technologies (2023), INDUS-X (2023), and the Security of Supply Arrangement (2024).

These frameworks enable logistics sharing, secure communications, geospatial intelligence exchange, and co-development of defence technologies — embedding cooperation into everyday military and industrial processes.

Technology collaboration has further reinforced institutional ties. In November 2025, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited signed a billion-dollar agreement with General Electric for fighter jet engines, marking a leap in defence industrial cooperation. Earlier, in July 2025, the joint NASA–ISRO NISAR satellite was launched, enhancing capabilities in disaster management, agriculture, and infrastructure planning.

Such projects create long-term interdependence, making sudden political disengagement costly and impractical for both sides.

The Quad’s expanding agenda now includes infrastructure and connectivity. The inaugural Quad Ports of the Future Conference, held alongside India Maritime Week in Mumbai in November 2025, brought together delegates from 24 Indo-Pacific partners. Co-organised by India’s Ministry of External Affairs and Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, it emphasised resilient, secure, and sustainable port development as a strategic priority.

This reflects a broader shift: quality infrastructure is now a geopolitical tool, and India–US cooperation increasingly extends into regional capacity-building beyond pure security concerns.

What emerges from 2025 is a clear lesson. India–US relations operate on parallel tracks. Political leaders navigate diplomacy shaped by domestic pressures and shifting global alignments. Meanwhile, institutional frameworks — defence, technology, maritime security, and infrastructure — continue to evolve with relative autonomy.

This continuity may be the partnership’s greatest strength. It preserves trust, maintains momentum during political lows, and prevents short-term disputes from hollowing out long-term strategic convergence.

Analysts caution that even if trade disputes ease, restoring full political momentum will take time. The path forward lies in deepening institutional understanding — not just in defence, but across emerging technologies, supply chains, and regional development.

Learning each other’s bureaucratic systems, aligning processes, and expanding cooperation into new sectors will be essential to sustaining trust during inevitable political downturns. As 2026 approaches, one truth stands out: while summits may pause, institutions keep the India–US partnership alive — quietly anchoring it in shared interests and long-term strategic relevance.