Rubio's Mumbai-over-Delhi trip signals Washington's deal-driven priorities toward India

When Marco Rubio landed in India last week, he did not go to New Delhi. The US secretary of state, on his second visit to the country this year and only five months after his first as secretary, went instead to Mumbai, the financial capital. There he met India's foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and a group of business leaders. He did not meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He also made a stop in Jamnagar, a small town in Gujarat that hosts the enormous oil refinery complex run by Reliance Industries. There he met Mukesh Ambani, Reliance's chair. The itinerary drew comment before and during the trip, and some saw the skipped meeting with Modi as a snub.

Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has tracked India's place in the world for a decade and has called Trump's second term an "unbound" era for India-US relations. He thought the chatter about Delhi being skipped was overblown, since not every bilateral meeting has to happen in a national capital. But he believes the venues were chosen on purpose. This administration, and this president in particular, sees foreign policy through deal-making, and Mumbai is an obvious place to drum up business.

Jamnagar, Vaishnav argues, carries a domestic political message. Petrol prices in the United States are very high and are likely to be a major issue in the 3 November midterm elections, so the administration wants to be seen doing all it can to bring them down. India is a major oil consumer and also a major exporter of refined products. In Vaishnav's reading, one of Rubio's aims was to encourage Reliance, and through it India, to process more Venezuelan crude.

The relationship has been strained under Trump's second administration, mainly over tariffs and India's purchases of Russian oil. Trump imposed a punitive 50% tariff on India in 2025, later cut to 18% earlier this year, though no comprehensive trade deal has been reached. Vaishnav also points to White House restrictions on H-1B visas and green cards, which have hit Indian workers in Silicon Valley disproportionately. Earlier this month New Delhi called remarks by Vice-President JD Vance about Indian professionals "deeply offensive". In January, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick blamed the missing trade deal on Modi's failure to phone Trump, a characterisation New Delhi disputes.

The biggest surprise for Vaishnav has been Washington's embrace of Pakistan after the May 2025 conflict with India, which Trump took credit for ending. Biden left office without ever making a presidential call to his Pakistani counterpart, and many in Congress had tired of what Vaishnav calls Pakistan's double game. Trump then thanked Pakistan for helping capture a suspect tied to the 2021 bombing in Afghanistan that killed 13 US service members. In June he welcomed Pakistan's army chief, Asim Munir, to the White House, after Munir called for Trump to be nominated for the Nobel peace prize. Vaishnav attributes the shift to Trump's strongman envy, Pakistan's savvy diplomacy, and prospective energy and crypto deals involving people in Trump's inner circle. For Delhi, he says, Modi's personal rapport with Trump and 25 years of investment in the relationship offer no guarantee against a 180-degree reversal.

Still, his Carnegie colleague Sameer Lalwani argues the relationship is sturdier than the rhetoric suggests. Bilateral trade hit a record in 2025, US technology companies have pledged nearly $68bn in AI infrastructure investment in India, and the two militaries have held a record number of joint exercises this year. Vaishnav urges caution all the same: he says much of this progress stems from decisions made years ago, and that turbulence could make new initiatives a heavier lift. He adds that announcements by governments and firms do not always become delivery.

His advice for India is largely domestic: stay a robust, inclusive, participatory democracy, and press ahead with reforms such as more efficient dispute resolution, an impartial legal system, even-handed tax enforcement and regulatory certainty. Neither side can afford to treat the other as expendable, and the test is whether the strategic foundations hold through global upheaval.