US President Donald Trump’s claim on September 5, 2025 that the US has “lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest China” has been challenged by South Asia analyst Michael Kugelman, who argues India has not aligned with China and that the outburst reflects Trump’s frustration over stalled trade talks and New Delhi denying him credit for the India–Pakistan ceasefire, a stance that complicates ties and inadvertently advances Beijing’s narrative of a new order after the SCO summit in Tianjin where PM Narendra Modi met Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin earlier in the week. Trump has simultaneously escalated pressure on India with new 50% tariffs—framing the trade relationship as a “disaster”—while signaling warmer overtures toward China, a divergence that unsettles the Indo-Pacific’s strategic balance and strains traditional alignments vital to India’s interests. New Delhi, which maintains strategic autonomy, continues measured efforts to manage the China border standoff without conceding geopolitical space, even as Trump later insisted there was “nothing to worry about” in the US–India relationship, underscoring the administration’s mixed messaging that injects uncertainty into bilateral planning and regional security calculations.