Donald Trump loves to brand himself a master of the deal. But in South Asia, his playbook looks less like deal-making and more like self-sabotage. He’s hitting India — America’s democratic partner and China counterweight — with tariffs, while offering Pakistan, a failed terror state, the kind of praise usually reserved for trusted allies.

Let’s be clear: Pakistan is no misunderstood victim. It is a professional blackmailer in global politics — a country that sheltered Osama bin Laden in plain sight, funds and trains jihadists, and exports instability like it’s a national industry. Its intelligence service, the ISI, is less a spy agency than a terror factory with diplomatic immunity. And yet Trump talks about “tremendous relations” with Islamabad, dangling the prospect of restored military aid as if decades of U.S. funding hadn’t already fueled the same militants killing American troops in Afghanistan.

India, meanwhile, gets punished for being a partner. Trump’s tariffs — dressed up as “trade fairness” — ignore that India has been one of the few steady anchors for U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi shares intelligence, supports counterterrorism operations, and resists China’s Belt-and-Road encirclement. If Washington were serious about containing Beijing, India would be at the top of its friends list, not its tariff hit list.

This isn’t just bad economics — it’s bad geopolitics. The tariffs and Pakistan outreach aren’t isolated moves. They fit a wider pattern: Washington trying to force India into compliance on American terms, without regard for India’s own national interests. The same playbook was visible in the U.S. role in aiding the political upheaval in Bangladesh — destabilizing a government friendly to New Delhi in favor of one more pliable to American preferences. The message is clear: cooperate on U.S. timelines, or face economic and political pressure.

Defenders will call Trump’s outreach to Pakistan “realism” — keeping Islamabad close to secure Afghan supply lines or to influence the Taliban. But we’ve seen this movie before. Post-9/11, billions in aid went to Pakistan, which in turn armed the very insurgents U.S. forces were fighting. That isn’t realism; it’s a strategic farce that Pakistan’s generals have been cashing in on for decades.

The danger is that this two-faced approach weakens America’s most important regional partner while strengthening its most duplicitous one. Alienating India risks nudging it toward Moscow, Paris, or even hedged engagement with Beijing. Appeasing Pakistan only emboldens its military-jihad complex and reinforces the old blackmail cycle: “Help us or we unleash the militants.”

If Trump were the dealmaker he claims, he’d recognize the real bargain: deepen ties with India — a democratic giant whose interests broadly align with America’s — and isolate Pakistan until it dismantles its terror infrastructure. Instead, his policy rewards perfidy and punishes partnership.

History may well record that India was taxed for being a friend, while Pakistan was courted for being a threat. That’s not the art of the deal. It’s the art of losing — and in South Asia, the price of that loss will be paid in both strategy and security.