Tucked away in the India–US joint statement outlining the framework for an interim trade deal is an innocuous paragraph on “economic security”. Although the idea of economic security is not new, it has now acquired a new prominence. It heralds the return of economic statecraft to the very centre of grand strategy. But can the Indian foreign policy discourse adapt?

The India-US joint statement says that the two sides “agree to strengthen economic security alignment to enhance supply-chain resilience and innovation through complementary actions to address non-market policies of third parties, as well as cooperation on inbound and outbound investment reviews and export controls”. This is the new commercial grammar of geopolitics — where trade, technology, capital flows, and supply chains define the strategic balance just as much as military muscle.

To be sure, economic, industrial and technological capabilities have always constituted the core of hard power. But the relative political harmony among major powers and the rise of globalisation after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991 encouraged the separation of economics and security into different realms. That assumption has steadily eroded since the 2010s, as the backlash against globalisation mounted in the West and strategic tensions between the United States, China, and Russia surged.

Donald Trump’s first term (2017–21) was the moment when the old consensus shattered. Trump openly challenged America’s deep economic entanglement with China, identified the trade deficit as a national vulnerability, and insisted that Washington could no longer allow Beijing to hollow out US manufacturing.

If the foreign-policy establishment dismissed Trump’s arguments as protectionist bluster, the political reality proved otherwise. Trump’s successor, President Joe Biden (2021-25), embraced the logic of restoring domestic manufacturing prowess, reducing dependence on geopolitical rivals, and rebuilding technological dominance.

The Covid crisis exposed the fragility of global supply chains. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 drove home the new concerns. By the time the Group of Seven leaders met in Hiroshima in 2023, “economic security” had replaced the promotion of globalisation as the highest priority.

Trump’s return to the White House has dramatically accelerated this shift. The 2025 National Security Strategy affirmed that “economic security is fundamental to national security”. Trump’s economic security vision is not confined to China. It extends to America’s closest allies, including the European Union, Japan, South Korea — and India. At stake is nothing less than a restructuring of the global economic and technological order among the major centres of power — both the adversaries and allies.

Where does Russia figure in this shifting landscape? With a GDP of barely $2.5 trillion — compared to $31 trillion for the US, $20 trillion for the EU and China — Moscow is not an economic peer of the US. But its abundant natural resources, from hydrocarbons to critical minerals, give it great relevance.

It is of little surprise, then, that Trump has reached out enthusiastically to Vladimir Putin, even as the US pressures India to wind down its energy purchases from Moscow. Reports of Russia offering Trump an expansive $12-trillion economic partnership underscore Moscow’s desire to dilute its dependence on Beijing and Washington’s interest in prising Russia away from China.

Whether such a dramatic geopolitical reordering is achievable is uncertain, but even the possibility forces India to reassess the trajectory of US relations with Russia and China. An entente between Trump and Putin, following a peace settlement in Ukraine, could prove the current US obsession with Indian purchase of Russian oil a temporary one.

The conflict in Ukraine and its impact on India is an important reminder of a forgotten truth. When you are caught in the crossfire between great powers, even if unintended, there will be a price to pay. For now, however, India’s choice between greater access to the US market and discounted Russian oil is a no-brainer.

The arguments in Delhi linking Russian oil purchases to the idea of strategic autonomy reveal how out-of-sync with reality the traditional vocabulary of Indian foreign-policy discourse has become. But the government has moved on.

Delhi’s recent focus on signing free-trade agreements with Western partners marks an important pivot. After years of looking east for trade partnerships, Delhi has come to terms with a reality staring it in the face – the significant complementarity with the Western economies.

Indian diplomacy did adopt the language of economic resilience and trusted supply chains in the late 2010s, especially under the rubric of the Quad. India’s trade policy has finally caught up after Delhi withdrew from RCEP talks on Asia-wide free trade in 2019, focused on trade deals with the West and brought some of them to a close in the last few months.

The joint statement’s reference to “non-market policies of third countries” is clearly a reference to China. India’s participation in the ministerial meetings of new US initiatives like the Pax Silica and the critical minerals group over the last few weeks reflects a clear strategic judgement: That India cannot afford to remain unaligned in the deepening geoeconomic contestation between US and China.

That there is an economic convergence between India and the US in dealing with China’s dominance of global manufacturing and its monopoly over critical mineral supply chains is not in doubt. But turning that convergence into sustained India-US cooperation will not be easy.

The volatility of US policies and the inherent dynamism in the geoeconomic relationships between the US, China and Russia demand that Delhi continuously tend its foreign economic policy. India’s ability to secure its position in the unfolding geoeconomic world will depend even more on how deep its economic reform and technological modernisation at home are.

The writer is associated with the Motwani-Jadeja Institute of American Studies, Jindal Global University, and the Council on Strategic and Defence Research, Delhi