Multi-Alignment – How India trades and partners with the US, Russia, Europe and others without picking a side.
- 21% of crude from Russia (up from ~1% before the war)
- 50% US tariff imposed (on Indian exports, 2025)
- 52.9% jump in Brazilian exports (to India after the tariff shock)
- $20bn India–Brazil trade target (by 2030, from $15bn in 2025)
Putin spent twenty-seven hours in Delhi. Two months later India signed a trade deal with the European Union. In between came a Modi visit to China, while Washington imposed a fifty percent tariff.
India’s answer across every front is multi-alignment: deepen ties with rival powers at once, join no bloc, and treat the refusal to choose as leverage rather than indecision.
Energy is the one fixed point. Russian crude went from about one percent of imports before the war to over twenty-one percent after it, at a discount, settled largely outside the dollar. Faced with the tariff, India diversified rather than retaliated.
The signal to watch: How India handles a forced choice, the first time a partner makes exclusivity the price.
Where we would take your group
- A trade policy briefing. How the European agreement was actually negotiated.
- A refinery taking discounted crude. Energy security as the non-negotiable, priced.
- An exporter carrying the tariff. What a fifty percent duty does to an order book.
Questions for the debrief
- India treats affordable energy for 1.4 billion people as non-negotiable and everything else as tradeable. Identify the equivalent non-negotiable in a country your students know.
- Washington claimed India agreed to halt Russian crude purchases; India never confirmed it. Both sides preferred ambiguity. When is strategic ambiguity an asset, and when is it a debt?
- Multi-alignment preserves options but commits to nobody. What does it cost when a real crisis demands a side?
