Trump wrecked India ties for business interests in Pakistan: Former NSA

WASHINGTON: A key architect of close US-India engagement accused President Donald Trump of wrecking ties with New Delhi because of family business interests in Pakistan amid a visible rift between the White House and administration mandarins on India and the tariff issue.

Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who has served under President Biden, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton over the past decade and whose remit included India ties, told the podcast Meidastouch on Monday that Trump has "thrown the India relationship over the side" because of Pakistan's willingness to do business deals with the Trump family.


Sullivan was referring to Trump family ties to Zach Witkoff, co-founder of World Liberty Financial (WLFI), which signed a deal with the Pakistan Crypto Council in April of 2025, to advance crypto development and digital financial transformation in Pakistan. Members of the Trump family, including his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are reported to hold significant stake in the company.

Witkoff is the son of Steve Witkoff, a former real estate lawyer whose friendship with Trump goes back to the 1980s and who is now his troubleshooter in hotspots across the world, including in the Gulf and Russia-Ukraine. The crypto deal is believed to have resulted in Trump inviting Pakistan's military ruler Asim Munir to the White House, weeks after Zach Witkoff met him in Islamabad to promote his crypto venture.

Calling it "one of the more under-reported stories in Trump's foreign policy," Sullivan said jettisoning ties with India is a "huge strategic harm," and warned it would cause allies like Germany, Japan, and Canada to hedge their bets because the US could not be trusted and they could be next.

"Our word should be our bond. We should be good for what we say. Our friends should be able to rely on us. what's happening with India right now has huge direct impacts...it has this reverberating impact across all of our relationships and partnerships in the world," he said.

Sullivan's remarks came even as Trump administration mandarins appeared to be dialing down the White House invective against India amid wide coverage in the US media of the SCO summit in China. Many pundits lamented that Trump's hardball approach was driving New Delhi to closer ties with Moscow and Beijing in what some characterized as a new "axis of upheaval."

But US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made light of the SCO meeting, calling it "largely performative," and maintaining that India's values are much closer to America's that to China's or Russia's. “The Indians have not been great actors in terms of buying Russian oil and then reselling it, financing the Russian war effort in Ukraine. But at the end of the day, two great countries will get this solved,” Bessent said.

White House trade counselor Peter Navarro too appeared to dial down his diatribe against India, saying, with reference to the SCO summit in Tianjin, "It was a shame to see Modi getting in bed with Xi Jinping and Putin... We hope he comes around to seeing that he needs to be with us and not Russia."

But many analysts reckon the damage is done and it will be tough to retrieve the relationship. "Even if India and U.S. eventually reach a tariff deal, the trust is most likely gone," Ed Price, a senior non-resident fellow at New York University told CNBC, amid alarm in the US commentariat at what is seen as monumental missteps by Trump.

"If the Chinese, the Russians, and Indians get together in any form of alliance that is economic and around the edges military, there's no way that the Americans can compete in the 21st Century. We might as well go home," Price said.