'Quad cannot proceed while Trump targets India': Ex-foreign secretary hits out at Congress

Former Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal on Tuesday said India should not blame itself for tensions with the United States, arguing that President Donald Trump's policies were part of his wider "wrecking diplomacy" that targeted multiple nations, not just India.

On Monday, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the absence of a trade deal and the cancellation of the Quad Summit, which was supposed to be held in New Delhi.  

Responding to him, Sibal wrote: "We should point the finger at Trump not at ourselves for his wrecking diplomacy. It is all round, not only directed at India. We are standing up and not bending our knees to him. That we are maintaining our dignity should be appreciated by the opposition too rather than take the line that our problems with Trump are of our own making. This approach gives space to others to exploit our internal politics."

Sibal said the government was facing a dual challenge — managing both Trump's erratic trade and diplomatic posture and domestic political criticism. "The government has not only to face the Trump challenge but an internal challenge too, that of managing perceptions at home," he said.

He added that holding a Quad summit in Delhi while Trump continued to impose punitive measures on India would have sent the wrong message. "Having a Quad summit in Delhi while Trump is hitting at India arbitrarily would have meant we would have reconciled ourselves to his punitive actions against us," Sibal said.

He called it ironic that the Quad, originally meant to counter China’s expansionism, would proceed even as India faced direct economic and strategic pressure from Washington. “The irony is that Quad is directed at China's expansionist threat. Having a Quad summit without resolving the US threat to India itself, both in trade and its strategic autonomy, would have been an anomaly," he added.

In a post on Monday, Ramesh wrote: "There was a time when we were told that India would be hosting the Quad Summit (USA, Japan, Australia, and India) in Nov 2025. That is now not happening...There was a time when we were told that India would be amongst the earliest to sign a trade deal with the US. That supposed deal has become an ordeal while exports to the US decline, leading to the loss of livelihoods here."

He also referenced Trump's remarks on Operation Sindoor, saying it was "stopped suddenly and unexpectedly" and that the first announcement came from Washington, not New Delhi. 

Last week, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal had said that India and the US were in the "advanced stages" of negotiating the first phase of their bilateral trade deal. He said five rounds of talks had already taken place and stressed that India would not sign any agreement "in a hurry or with a gun to our head."