The tariffs were lower. The message was clearer. When US President Donald Trump announced that India’s tariff would be cut to 18%, Pakistan -- still facing a 19% rate -- was forced to confront a hard truth: its long campaign of goodwill towards the US president had failed to deliver real influence.
If you’ve been anywhere near South Asian social media this week, you didn’t need a tariff schedule to know something seismic had happened. You could feel it in the sarcasm, the memes, the self-lacerating humour. Pakistan wasn’t reacting to a trade deal so much as to a moment of rude geopolitical clarity.
When Trump announced that the US had reached a trade agreement with India -- lowering tariffs on Indian exports -- the news landed in Pakistan like a dropped plate in a silent room. The details are still hazy. The symbolism was not.
That line wasn’t really about India or America. It was about Pakistan -- and an uncomfortable reckoning with where the country thought it stood, versus where it had just discovered it actually was.
For months, Pakistan was under the impression that it had finally cracked the Trump code. It praised Trump to the skies. It nominated him -- repeatedly -- for the Nobel Peace Prize. It signed up for his “Board of Peace.” It offered cooperation, access, goodwill, minerals -- whatever the moment seemed to demand.
In return, many believed, Pakistan had reclaimed its old role: the partner Washington couldn’t ignore.
The belief took hold in Islamabad that Pakistan had once again become Washington’s indispensable partner. India’s posture was framed as rigidity. In truth, it was strategic discipline -- a conscious decision to avoid Trump’s performative diplomacy and protect long-term leverage.
Then came Trump’s post on Truth Social. And Pakistan’s illusion cracked overnight.
The first response was disbelief. Then mockery. Then anger -- often turned inward.
Users listed, almost ceremonially, everything Islamabad had done to stay in Trump’s good books.
The Nobel Peace Prize nomination came up again and again. So did Pakistan’s enthusiastic participation in Trump’s various peace initiatives and grandiose visions.
Pakistan had done everything to please Trump -- including nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize, joining his “Board of Peace”, and offering cooperation on minerals -- yet India, which resisted Trump at every turn, walked away with lower tariffs.
To add insult to injury, India had also just sealed major trade concessions with the European Union, deemed widely as “the mother of all deals.”
This was never really about tariffs. It was about hierarchy.
Pakistan’s elite discourse had convinced itself that India–US ties were fraying even as Pakistan–US relations were stabilising.
Trump’s public irritability with New Delhi was misread as strategic drift. Islamabad’s warmer tone was mistaken for leverage. Proximity was confused with power.
What the trade deal brutally exposed was that India’s apparent indifference was not neglect. It was posture.
As tariff tensions escalated last year, India chose distance over desperation. At the height of the standoff, German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine reported that Prime Minister Narendra Modi declined to take multiple calls from Trump -- an extraordinary breach of great-power choreography.
That context matters because Washington later tried to recast the episode as a failure of access.
US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, speaking on the All-In Podcast, claimed the India–US trade agreement stalled because Modi did not personally call Trump to close it.
India rejected that version outright.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said Modi and Trump had spoken eight times during 2025, covering a wide range of issues -- undercutting the suggestion that communication, or the lack of it, was the problem.
Lutnick’s account, Jaiswal said, was “not accurate” and misrepresented both the nature and substance of the negotiations.
New Delhi’s rebuttal made clear that the issue was not avoidance or discomfort, but process. India signalled that while engagement with the US remained active and structured, it would not reduce complex trade talks to personalised theatrics.
That frostiness peaked in what would become the last direct exchange between the two leaders. According to The New York Times, a June phone call soured when Trump claimed credit for defusing India–Pakistan tensions during their military clash.
New Delhi pushed back sharply, insisting the situation had been managed bilaterally, without US mediation.
“PM Modi told President Trump clearly that during this period, there was no talk at any stage on subjects like India-US trade deal or US mediation between India and Pakistan,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri had said.
India had launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 in response to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people, most of them civilians. What followed was a brief but intense four-day confrontation, with Pakistan attempting -- unsuccessfully -- to target Indian positions using drones and missiles.
The escalation ended only after Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations reached out to his Indian counterpart to seek a ceasefire understanding.
Seen in hindsight, that sequence explains why the trade deal cut so deeply in Pakistan. India didn’t win by courting Trump better. It won by not courting him at all.
On Monday, Trump said he had reached a trade agreement with Modi that would reduce tariffs on Indian goods to 18%, lower than many Asian peers.
A punitive 25% duty slapped on India for buying Russian oil was also scrapped. Trump claimed India would, in return, purchase $500 billion of US goods, switch to Venezuelan oil, and cut tariffs on US imports to zero.
India hasn’t confirmed those specifics. No formal documentation has been published. But the direction of travel is unmistakable.
However, in a post on X, Modi acknowledged the announcement, saying he was “delighted that Made in India products will now have a reduced tariff of 18%,” and thanked Trump for what he called a “wonderful” move benefiting India’s 1.4 billion people.
Wonderful to speak with my dear friend President Trump today. Delighted that Made in India products will now have a reduced tariff of 18%. Big thanks to President Trump on behalf of the 1.4 billion people of India for this wonderful announcement.
Last week, Modi clinched a long-stalled free trade pact with the European Union. Earlier, India finalised a trade deal with the UK. Together with agreements signed with Oman, New Zealand and now the United States, India has concluded five trade pacts in just 12 months -- its fastest burst of trade diplomacy in years.
These weren’t rushed concessions -- they were signals that New Delhi was willing to diversify, hedge, and wait out Washington rather than plead with it.
Later this month, Modi will host leaders from Canada and Brazil in New Delhi, deepening ties with “middle power” countries navigating Trump’s reshaped global order. India isn’t just reacting to Trump. It’s building around him.
For Pakistan, this moment feels less like a diplomatic setback and more like a mirror held too close.
The meltdown wasn’t about India winning. It was about Pakistan realising that praise, proximity, and performative loyalty don’t automatically translate into influence -- especially when power dynamics are already unequal.
And that, perhaps more than any tariff number, is why this trade deal has rattled Pakistan so deeply.
Source Name : Economic Times