India should avoid making early concessions in its ongoing trade negotiations with the United States and instead remain patient as Washington’s bargaining position evolves, according to the latest SBI Ecowrap report.The report argues that the US administration has increasingly adopted a negotiation strategy built around uncertainty, using ambiguity as leverage across issues ranging from tariffs and Nato to Iran, China, Greenland and India.“US Administration is using uncertainty as a bargaining instrument across Nato, Iran, tariffs, Greenland, China and also India,” the report said.In game-theory terms, it added, Washington is “preserving incomplete information about the ‘type’ of bargaining”, forcing negotiating partners to decide whether to concede, wait, test or counter-escalate.
India should play the long game
According to SBI Research, India occupies a unique position in the evolving global strategic landscape. Unlike Nato allies that remain heavily dependent on US security guarantees or China, which enjoys significant counter-leverage through rare earths, manufacturing and supply chains, India possesses a different set of strategic strengths.These include its large domestic market, technology talent, pharmaceutical industry, defence procurement, energy flexibility, influential diaspora and growing importance in the Indo-Pacific.Against this backdrop, the report said India should avoid rushing into compromises.“India’s best strategy… is to wear down the opening position, not the relationship. Keep the conversation warm, avoid public escalation, make limited and reversible offers, and wait for US administration first demand to run into US market costs, China-balancing needs and alliance fatigue,” the report said.It further advised India to “test the resolve” of the US administration even if doing so involves accepting higher short-term costs, arguing that such an approach would improve India’s bargaining position over the longer term.
Washington increasingly using uncertainty as leverage
The Ecowrap report said the current US administration has blurred the lines between trade, defence, strategic resources and diplomacy by increasingly bundling them into a single negotiating framework.Instead of treating these issues separately, Washington is linking defence spending with trade, security arrangements with tariffs, and access to strategic resources with broader geopolitical alignment.According to the report, this strategy typically follows a familiar pattern: announce strong tariff or policy measures, observe reactions from markets and governments, and then modify or sequence the final decision based on the evolving costs.The report said ambiguity itself has become a negotiating asset because allies and rivals often cannot determine whether a US announcement represents final policy, an opening negotiating position or simply a public signal.However, SBI Research cautioned that repeated reliance on such tactics could gradually weaken US credibility.“If every partner learns that the final US position will be adjusted when costs rise, the bargaining value of the signal declines,” the report observed.
China has greater leverage, but India has strategic strengths
The report identified China as the country with the strongest counter-leverage against the United States.According to SBI Research, Beijing’s control over critical minerals, rare-earth magnets, manufacturing capacity, export controls and global supply chains forces Washington to calibrate its negotiating approach more carefully.“If Washington moves too far, Beijing can respond outside the tariff schedule through licensing delays, industrial inputs, minerals or market access,” the report noted.While India does not possess China’s concentrated economic leverage, SBI said it enjoys meaningful strategic advantages that should not be underestimated.These include its expanding market, role as a technology partner, defence buyer and Indo-Pacific counterweight to China.The report suggested these strengths would become more valuable to Washington as geopolitical competition with Beijing intensifies.
Nato, tariffs and Iran reflect same bargaining strategy
The report cited Nato as one example of Washington’s broader negotiating approach.It said the US administration has effectively transformed long-standing alliance commitments into conditional bargains by linking defence spending with broader strategic alignment.Referring to Nato’s new defence spending target of 5% of GDP by 2035, the report said Spain’s resistance has been treated not merely as a budget issue but as a wider test of political alignment.“Nato was built to make security predictable. US administration’s intervention is that it has made predictability more conditional. Protection is presented as something allies must keep financing, demonstrating and politically sustaining,” the report said.Similarly, the report argued that tariffs are increasingly being used as a bargaining tool rather than simply an economic policy instrument, while Washington’s handling of Iran, Greenland and strategic resources reflects the same broader framework of issue-linking and uncertainty.
Trust could erode if uncertainty becomes permanent
While the report acknowledged that this negotiating strategy has generated short-term gains for Washington—including increased defence commitments from allies and greater negotiating leverage—it warned of longer-term consequences.Repeated use of uncertainty, it said, risks encouraging allies, rivals and markets to discount future US signals, gradually reducing the credibility of American commitments.“The short-run payoff is leverage. The long-run cost is trust depreciation,” the report said.SBI Research concluded that India should maintain its negotiating position, preserve the bilateral relationship and leverage its growing economic and strategic importance while waiting for a more favourable bargaining environment to emerge, rather than yielding to pressure for quick trade concessions.