Trump lifts 25% tariffs on India as a reward for halting Russian oil imports and pledging to buy U.S. energy. This uses trade as a blunt instrument to force geopolitical alignment, ending India's neutrality in the Ukraine conflict while securing a 10-year defense and energy partnership. This strategy converts trade policy into a zero-sum loyalty test. Republicans ignore that coerced alliances are fragile; India may hedge elsewhere if U.S. energy prices spike. Democrats overlook how effectively unilateral tariffs dismantled India’s "strategic autonomy," achieving a hard-line decoupling from Russia that multilateral diplomacy failed to secure. However, both miss that this sets a precedent for volatile trade relations where policy pivots on a single partner's compliance.