Context

• When the United States imposed a 25% tariff hike on Indian imports in August 2025, New Delhi’s response was predictable: muted rhetoric, quiet diplomacy, and no open retaliation.
• This familiar choreography, Washington striking, India absorbing, was framed as another episode in turbulent bilateral ties.
• Yet beneath the surface, these tariffs revealed not merely a dispute between two capitals, but deeper structural weaknesses within India’s own economic geography.

The Geography of Export Concentration

• India’s export economy is far from evenly distributed.
• Four states, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka, dominate, accounting for over 70% of merchandise exports, with Gujarat alone contributing more than 33%.
• This dominance is no accident; it reflects decades of infrastructure development, policy incentives, and political continuity concentrated in these zones.
• In contrast, the populous heartland states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh together muster barely 5% of outbound trade, underscoring the stark disparities in India’s export geography.

The Marginalisation of the Northeast

• Nowhere is this imbalance more evident than in the northeast, a region of eight states sharing 5,400 kilometres of international borders but contributing just 0.13% to national exports.
• The exclusion is not accidental; it is structural.
• There are no operational trade corridors linking the northeast to global markets, no logistical infrastructure capable of supporting volume, and no institutional presence in national trade policymaking bodies.
• Flagship export schemes, such as the Remission of Duties and Taxes on Exported Products (RoDTEP) and the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI), are implemented in industrial belts of western and southern India.
• While the northeast remains symbolically embraced but economically orphaned.
• Even the Directorate General of Foreign Trade’s 2024 strategic export plan omitted the region entirely, a silence that elicited no protest, as if its exclusion were natural.
• The consequences are tangible. Assam’s tea industry, responsible for more than half of India’s tea output, remains vulnerable due to low value-addition and dependence on bulk CTC-grade auctions.

Borders as Bottlenecks

• The northeast’s trade potential has also been crippled by its borders.
• India’s once-promising gateways to Myanmar, Zokhawthar in Mizoram and Moreh in Manipur, have withered into securitised outposts.
• Since Myanmar’s 2021 coup, cross-border trade has thinned, infrastructure has stagnated, and the 2024 scrapping of the Free Movement Regime severed not only commerce but also kinship economies.
• Instead of functioning as bridges to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), these frontiers have become grids of containment.
• Goods do not flow; troops do. Roads exist largely on paper, customs offices are understaffed, and logistical facilities are absent.
• China, meanwhile, consolidates its foothold in northern Myanmar through investments and alliances, outpacing India’s rhetoric of Act East with hard infrastructure.

Broader Implication and the Way Forward

• Broader Implication: Asia Moves, India Hesitates
  • This paralysis contrasts starkly with the dynamism elsewhere in Asia.
  • China and Southeast Asia are actively repositioning capital, building corridors, and restructuring supply chains to adapt to global shifts.
  • India, by contrast, negotiates trade agreements with Western powers while leaving its eastern frontier disconnected from the substance of global commerce.
  • The assumption that trade can remain tethered to colonial-era ports and post-independence clusters ignores geography and undercuts resilience.
  • Without integrating the northeast into national and regional trade frameworks, India undermines its claim to Indo-Pacific centrality.
• The Way Forward: Toward a Cohesive Economy
  • Trump’s tariffs will not, on their own, derail India’s economy. But they expose the fragility of an export model concentrated in a few enclaves while neglecting entire regions.
  • A cohesive national economy requires dispersion of capacity, not dependence; infrastructure that connects peripheries, not just coasts; and governance that recognises geography, not just electoral arithmetic.
  • The northeast does not demand slogans. It needs the minimum grammar of statecraft: roads that connect to markets, policies that incorporate its geographies, and representation in institutions that shape trade strategy.
  • For decades, it has been asked to wait, through insurgencies, ceasefires, and empty acronyms, while the world reconfigures its trade flows. Delay now resembles design.

Conclusion

• India cannot claim regional heft while its eastern flank remains economically brittle.
• Tariffs may be episodic, but the structural omission of the northeast corrodes the promise of a cohesive economy.
• Resilience must be reframed: not as the strength of a few export hubs, but as the capacity of the entire country to absorb shocks and participate in global trade.
• Until then, India’s blind spot remains intact, and its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific rest on shaky foundations.