India-US ties have not lost momentum: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio

On maiden India visit, US Secretary of State discusses energy, trade and immigration with foreign minister

India increasing sourcing of its energy supplies from the United States was a key issue that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed at their meeting in New Delhi on Sunday morning.

 

Rubio is on a maiden visit to India, which comes amid frayed ties between strategic partners India and the US. The Jaishankar-Rubio meeting also covered India-US civil nuclear cooperation, critical minerals, defence and trade ties, and the Iranian chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. They discussed the safety and security of maritime routes, such as in the Indo-Pacific, which is essential for energy and trade flows. The US Secretary of State said a mutually beneficial deal is imminent and asserted that the changes in America’s immigration policies were not targeted at India.

 

 

At their joint media briefing after their talks on Sunday morning, Rubio sought to allay concerns over dipping India-US relations, terming the ties between the two nations as “one of the most important” globally, which he said will witness an “upward trajectory”. Rubio said, “India-US relations have not lost momentum. India-US relations will come out much stronger in the coming years,” and both sides are “strategically aligned” on almost all key global issues.

 

Rubio’s four-day visit to India — he landed in Kolkata on Saturday morning — has come amid a widening trust deficit between Washington and New Delhi over the past year as the White House imposed stiff tariffs on India, embraced the military leadership of Pakistan as Trump announced brokering the ceasefire between the two during the May 2025 military conflict, with Washington’s new immigration policy and increasing the H-1B visa fee contributing to the fraying ties.

 

On New Delhi’s energy cooperation with Washington, Jaishankar described the US as a “significant and reliable” energy partner. He said there has been a “significant uptick” in energy supplies from the US to India, and added India is in an “era of de-risking” and it is important to secure large, dependable and affordable sources of energy, suggesting that the US has emerged as one such source. India is set to import significant amounts of LPG and liquefied natural gas from the US in May, according to predictive data from Kpler.

 

At the joint briefing, Rubio said India and the US are “strategically aligned on energy”. The two sides want “a world that can not just produce, but deliver the energy resources that are necessary to power a modern economy”, he said. After his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday, Rubio said the US was ready to help India diversify its energy supplies.

 

Rubio and Jaishankar’s discussion on energy comes amid the US push that New Delhi could purchase more Venezuelan oil. Venezuela, where American oil giants are close to securing deals to pump oil, has emerged as one of the top three suppliers of crude to India in recent weeks. On Thursday, Rubio told reporters in Miami before leaving for his visits to Sweden and India that America is ready to sell as much energy as India is willing to buy. “We want them to be a bigger part of their portfolio. We also think there are opportunities with Venezuelan oil,” Rubio said.

 

Jaishankar and Rubio also discussed the need to conclude the trade deal soon. The US Secretary of State met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday afternoon. Hours later, in a social media post, Rubio praised US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor and other American diplomats for “their great work” in India committing to “purchasing $500 billion in US goods over the next five years focusing on energy, technology and agriculture”.

 

On the bilateral trade deal under negotiation, the US Secretary of State said the two sides have made “tremendous progress”. “I think we're going to wind up with a trade agreement between the US and India that is going to be enduring and is going to be beneficial to both sides and sustainable in a way that addresses national interests that we have,” Rubio said. He asserted that the Donald Trump administration’s policy on trade is driven by a greater aim to recalibrate Washington’s overall approach to global trade and is not directed against any specific country.

 

“This is about the United States in terms of trade. The President did not say: ‘Let's figure out a way to create friction with India over trade’. The President came in and said: ‘We have a trade situation involving the US economy that doesn't work moving forward’,” he said. “There's a huge imbalance that's built up, and it needs to be addressed. He pursued it from a global perspective,” Rubio said.

 

The Secretary of State said there is virtually no country in the world that he has travelled to where the trade issue was not flagged. “The President said we have to rebalance US trade. This is not about India.” Rubio said a US trade delegation will visit India “very soon” to take forward the talks on the proposed trade deal. The US Secretary of State also pointed to the US’ problems on trade with its allies, including the European Union. “The difference is that India is a massive economy. This is a big economy where you're the leading trade partner. We do a lot of trade with India, and so obviously, there's a big difference between rebalancing trade with a country of this size and magnitude,” he said.

 

Jaishankar flagged India’s concerns with Rubio over the Trump administration’s changes to visa and immigration policies, saying legal mobility should not be adversely impacted by the new immigration approach. Rubio said the current process to reform the existing system is not targeted at India at all, but a larger effort at addressing the challenge of migration facing the US.

 

The US Secretary of State also invited the Prime Minister, on behalf of the US President, to visit the US later in the year. Rubio repeated the invite at Sunday’s joint media briefing. The readout of the meeting from the Prime Minister’s Office was, however, silent on Trump’s invite. This year is India’s turn to host the Quad Summit after it was postponed last year, and New Delhi is looking forward to hosting the US President. The two leaders last met when Modi visited Washington in February 2025.

 

Responding to a question about alleged racist comments against Indians, Rubio said, “I will take that very seriously about the comments. I'm sure that there are people who have made comments online and in other places because every country in the world has stupid people. I am sure there are stupid people here; there are stupid people in the United States who make dumb comments all the time,” he said. In April, US President Trump shared a right-wing television anchor Michael Savage’s social media post, which had described India and China as “hellholes” and criticised US immigration laws. India’s Ministry of External Affairs termed the views as “uninformed, inappropriate and in poor taste”.

 

During the briefing in New Delhi, Rubio said of the conflict in West Asia that there is a possibility of “good news” coming later in the day, “and I'll leave it to the (US) President to make further announcements on it”. The key sticking points in the US-Iran peace talks are Iran’s nuclear programme and control over the Strait of Hormuz. “I remind everybody that the ultimate goal is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon,” Rubio said. “The Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway, and what they are doing now is basically threatening to destroy commercial vessels using an international waterway that is illegal under any concept of international law,” Rubio said.

 

Rubio is on a four-day visit to India. He landed in Kolkata on Saturday morning, where he visited the US Consulate General, America’s second-oldest consulate in the world, and the Missionaries of Charity, which comes amid concerns in the US about the Indian government’s proposed amendments to the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act. Rubio is also scheduled to visit Agra and Jaipur. With Jaishankar as the host, Rubio will attend the meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, foreign ministers, along with Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her Japanese counterpart Toshimitsu Motegi, on Tuesday.