The latest from Washington is US President Donald Trump’s threat to declare the Strait of Hormuz “a territory of the United States.” The comment came as efforts to revive peace talks with Iran remained stalled. “After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States,” Trump said on Friday.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Just how seriously Trump intends to pursue such a fantastical proposition is difficult to say. But the statement is revealing nevertheless. Iran has rejected the claim and continues to insist that the reopening of the Strait will be under Iranian authority. Meanwhile, shipping through Hormuz has virtually collapsed, with Iran retaining considerable influence over what traffic does pass through the waterway.For India, however, the larger lesson lies beyond the immediate crisis in West Asia. The increasingly unpredictable manner in which the United States is exercising its economic and strategic power should prompt New Delhi to begin drawing some lines of its own.For much of the past year, India has found itself being kicked around by Washington on one issue after another. The most immediate is trade. On paper, India and the US are negotiating an interim trade agreement intended to provide a mutually acceptable framework for tariffs. But the problem is that the goalposts keep moving.In February, Washington and New Delhi announced an interim framework under which the United States would apply an 18% reciprocal tariff on Indian goods, accompanied by substantial Indian concessions on American exports. The subsequent US Supreme Court decision striking down Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs altered the legal basis of that arrangement.Washington then imposed a temporary 10% tariff, while the two countries continued negotiating a longer-term agreement. With the expiry of the legal authority for this tariff, the US has taken recourse to a 10% tariff on the basis of Section 301 of the US Trade Act alleging that India has been found, along with 60 other countries, using forced labour in its factories.That would have been complicated enough. But Washington has since added another instrument of pressure.The US Senate has advanced legislation in the name of the late Senator Lindsey Graham that would give the White House authority to impose tariffs of up to 100% on major purchasers of Russian oil and gas. India and China are among the countries most directly exposed.Also read: Number of Indian Students in the US Drops to 29-Month Low: ReportIndia will be faced with an impossible situation if these tariffs are imposed, but China could well evade them by threatening its own counter-measures. The legislation gives the president considerable discretion to waive or modify the measures in the US national interest. The bill has nevertheless become a potent instrument of pressure on countries that continue buying Russian energy.For India, this is not a marginal issue. Russian crude has been an important source of relatively inexpensive energy since 2022, helping India manage its import bill, fuel prices and inflation and that its energy security cannot simply be subordinated to American foreign-policy preferences.This is where the issue becomes larger than tariffs. If Washington can use access to the American market to compel India to alter the sources of its energy supplies, it acquires a degree of leverage over Indian economic policy that goes well beyond normal trade negotiations. India has ended up buying more oil from the Americas which comes with an additional freight cost.Another and new tariff sword hanging over India’s head relates to the charge that it is among 40 countries helping China evade US tariffs. The allegation is that countries like India are importing Chinese goods, modifying them marginally and exporting them to the US at tariffs they would face if they had been directly exported from China. So far the US has not imposed penal action but the possibility remains.India has already experienced something similar in the defence relationship. The Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, of 2017 was designed to punish countries dealing with Russia’s defence sector. India escaped the full consequences through an ad hoc US waiver, but the principle remains: Washington reserves the right to penalise an Indian strategic choice because it conflicts with American geopolitical priorities.The same problem has now appeared in Iran.India’s investment in the Chabahar port has long been regarded in New Delhi as a strategic necessity. The port provides India with an alternative route to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan, and gives New Delhi a maritime foothold close to the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. India Ports Global Limited has invested about $120 million in the Shahid Beheshti terminal.For years, Washington recognised the strategic logic of the project and granted India a sanctions exemption. That exemption expired on April 26 this year. India subsequently said that the issue remained under discussion with both Washington and Teheran.The irony should not be lost on anyone in New Delhi. At precisely the moment when the strategic importance of the Gulf of Oman, Hormuz and alternative maritime routes has become dramatically clearer, India finds its access to one of the region’s most important ports constrained by US sanctions policy.And that brings us back to Hormuz.The extraordinary thing about Trump’s latest statement is that it implicitly treats a vital international waterway as something that can simply be appropriated by the United States because the US Navy is powerful enough to exercise control over it. The legal status of the Strait is, of course, far more complicated than that.Also read: US Warns Countries Including India Could Face Penalties for Helping China Evade TariffsIndia should be paying very close attention.For decades, New Delhi’s strategic calculations have rested on the assumption that American power, despite its occasional excesses, broadly operates within a predictable international framework that is largely in India’s interest. That assumption is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain.This does not mean that India should turn against the United States. The relationship with Washington remains indispensable in many areas: defence technology, intelligence, maritime security, critical technologies, trade and the broader balance of power in the ‘Indo-Pacific’. India has no interest in weakening it.But a strong partnership cannot mean that one side continually dictates the choices of the other.Strategic autonomy means retaining sufficient freedom of manoeuvre to make decisions according to India’s own interests. Equally it demands that New Delhi needs to communicate clearly what it regards as non-negotiable.India can negotiate tariffs and discuss market access. It can negotiate the terms on which American companies enter the Indian market. It can explain its position on Russian oil and work with Washington where interests coincide.But India’s energy security, its connectivity to Central Asia, its relationship with Iran and its broader strategic choices cannot become bargaining chips in an endlessly shifting American negotiating process.Confronted by American pressure, India tends to respond issue by issue — seeking a waiver here, another exemption there, and another concession in return for relief. That may work tactically but less sustainable strategically.The question confronting New Delhi is therefore not whether it should accommodate the US. It should, where accommodation serves Indian interests. The question is whether it is prepared to say no when those interests are fundamentally at stake.Trump’s extraordinary declaration about Hormuz should serve as a warning. If a president can contemplate declaring an international waterway American territory, India should certainly be capable of drawing a few lines of its own in the sand.Manoj Joshi is a distinguished fellow with the Observer Research Foundation.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.