Trump’s State of the Union 2026: Top takeaways for India

For the most part, U.S. President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Speech highlighted his administration’s moves on growing the U.S. economy and affordability, cracking down on crime and immigration, while attacking former President Joseph Biden (2020-2024) and the Democrats in opposition, even calling them “crazy”.

Here are some takeaways on issues that matter to India:

India-Pakistan

In his speech, U.S. President Trump claimed again, as he has more than 90 times in the past year, that he ended the India-Pakistan conflict in May 2025, along with seven other global conflicts. India has denied the claim, including once when Prime Minister Narendra Modi directly told Mr. Trump it was incorrect during a telephone conversation in June 2025. Since then however, New Delhi has chosen not to respond to Mr. Trump’s contention that he stopped the post-Pahalgam attack conflict just short of a “nuclear war”, saving millions of lives, using the threat of tariffs against both India and Pakistan.

 “35 million people, said the Prime Minister of Pakistan, would have died if it were not for my involvement”, Mr Trump said on Wednesday (February 25, 2026), in comments that are not likely to elicit a response from India.

Iran

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi left for a 24-hour visit to Israel on Wednesday (February 25, 2026), he risked flying into a conflict — with the U.S. mobilising ships and jets and moving personnel from key bases to prepare for a major attack on Iran. However, Mr. Trump indicated in the SOTU speech he still wants to give talks between Iran and the U.S., scheduled for Thursday (February 26, 2026) in Geneva a chance.

“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon, can’t let that happen,” Mr. Trump said adding that he was still waiting to hear the “secret words” that Iran would “never have a nuclear weapon”. 

In a social media post about the Geneva talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that “Iran will under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon; neither will Iranians ever forgo our right to harness the dividends of peaceful nuclear technology for our people.” In the hypothetical situation the U.S. does strike Iran and Iran retaliates by targeting Israeli and U.S. assets in the region, PM Modi’s visit would become awkward. In 1979, then External Affairs Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had to cut a visit to Beijing abruptly, as China attacked Vietnam just as the visit began. More recently, In February 2022, Pakistan PM Imran Khan had to hotfoot back home after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began shortly after his arrival in Moscow.

Tariffs

Clearly upset at the U.S. Supreme Court for striking down his authority to impose reciprocal tariffs, Mr. Trump said that the tariffs would stay in place as he tested out different laws to impose them under, and claimed that all those countries the US has concluded trade deals with in the past year were keen to stick by the terms of the deals. Meanwhile he repeated his rationale that the tariffs had also helped him end a number of global conflicts.

“Many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs. I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without them. [The tariffs] will remain in place under fully approved and we tested alternative legal statutes and they have been tested for a long time,” he said.

It is unclear where that leaves India, where PM Modi and President Trump spoke and verbally agreed to a deal, which would bring the 50% tariffs imposed to 18% and even issued a joint statement on the interim agreement framework. After the U.S. Supreme Court verdict, however, New Delhi put off talks between negotiators scheduled for this week to give both sides time to consider its consequences. Meanwhile, on Tuesday (February 24, 2026), the U.S. slapped a new duty of 125.87% on imports of certain Indian solar goods, alleging that the products are unfairly subsidised by New Delhi.

The global economic consequences of the SCOTUS ruling invalidating Trump tariffs

In the SOTU speech, Mr. Trump didn’t single out India, but continued to tout his economic policies of “make in America” and $18 trillion investment commitments in total by other countries that were earlier “ripping off the U.S.” 

Immigration

Since he came to office in January 2025, U.S. President Trump has cleared several actions to target immigration, illegal aliens and visas, all of which have affected lakhs of Indian students and professionals keen to find work in the U.S., and seen the deportation of thousands of illegal migrants back to India. During his speech he doubled down on the actions and laws, including a new “Save America Act” on voter registrations to keep non-citizens out of the elections process, as well as the harsh measures taken by Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents to deport aliens.

“Importing [foreign] cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA. And it is the American people who pay the price in higher medical bills, car insurance rates, rent, taxes and perhaps most importantly crime. We will take care of this problem. We’re going to take care of this problem.,” Mr. Trump said, adding in a warning that the US was not “playing games”. In particular Mr. Trump recounted the story of a 5-year-old girl Delilah Coleman run over by an Indian-origin truck driver Partap Singh in California in August 2025. Mr. Singh is now facing deportation proceedings.

“The driver was an illegal alien let in by Joe Biden and given a commercial driver’s license by open borders politicians in California,” said Mr. Trump, detailing her serious injuries before introducing her and her father to members of US Congress. He also introduced other families who had lost loved ones to what he called the “scourge of illegal immigration”, and called on Congress to pass the Delilah Act barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. In the 2026 Indian American Attitudes Survey (IAAS) published this month, Indian American community members reported a marked uptick in online hate speech and discrimination, and found diaspora support for the Trump administration, that had increased prior to the 2024 elections, weakening now.