India will decide who wins US-China contest, expert warns Trump

Edward Price, senior non-resident fellow at New York University, on Wednesday said that India has the potential to become "the most substantial and influential country in the 21st century" and could decide the outcome of any future US-China confrontation, but Washington under President Donald Trump is failing to build that partnership.

Speaking to CNBC in the wake of Trump's tariffs on Indian imports, Price argued that the US should be working to bring India "as close as possible" rather than risking pushing New Delhi closer to Beijing. "If India plays its cards right, it should become - if not the most powerful, the most substantial and influential country in the 21st century," Price said. "Meaning that if India throws its weight in any future US–China conflict, it will decide the winner. I cannot understand why the United States is not bringing India, particularly India and Brazil, and the EU, as close as possible if we're confronting Russia and China."

Price said Trump's approach - including a 5o% tariff on Indian imports of Russian oil and arms effective August 27 - has "upended the Indo-Pacific order, not to the United States' favour." Instead of consolidating an anti-China coalition, Washington risks consolidating BRICS unity.

He dismissed the idea that BRICS is a united and anti-Western bloc. "China and India have a long-run disagreement, as do Russia and China," Price said. "So when we look at this new alignment, the BRICS, and say, 'Well, this is a homogeneous block that is always and forever going to be opposed to Western and American interests,' I don’t think that’s correct."

However, he cautioned that US diplomatic missteps could have the opposite effect. "If the United States continues down this path of some degree of autarky, some degree of pulling away from global trade - and, by the way, insults everybody while doing it...a lot of these trade negotiations are not very genteel, they're pretty rude honestly - then ultimately, China and Russia and India might say to themselves, 'Well, if the Americans want to carry on doing whatever they’re doing over in the Americas, we have to find a way to get on.'"

On the broader global shift, Price said Trump's transactional, win-focused approach - including a drive to claim credit for ending Russia's war in Ukraine ahead of US midterms - ignored the reality that "the world has changed." "The very effect of globalisation is that there are now more peer competitors in the world economy. We assumed that if you trade, you will be peaceful, that you will submit to the United States. That’s not the case. The world has changed. China is richer, and it has every right to be a sovereign country on the world stage. But there can’t be two big dogs - and while it’s the US for now, that can’t last."