Since his return to the White House in 2025, Trump has refused to participate in a leaders’ summit, negatively impacting the Quad and degrading its geostrategic value

When the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — commonly known as the Quad — was revived in earnest in 2017, it was hailed as one of the most consequential strategic architectures of the 21st century. A coalition of four like-minded democracies — the United States, India, Japan and Australia — bound by shared values and a common concern about China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, the Quad was meant to be the geopolitical cornerstone of a free and open maritime order. By 2021, it had been elevated to leaders’ summits, producing ambitious agendas on vaccine distribution, climate, critical technologies and maritime security. The euphoria was genuine. The ambition, enormous. The question today is whether that promise has quietly been allowed to slip away.

Under President Donald Trump’s second term, the Quad has not been abandoned outright, but it has been treated with a studied indifference that has done considerable damage. Since his return to the White House in 2025, Trump has refused to participate in a leaders’ summit, leaving the Quad negatively impacted and degrading its geostrategic value. That single fact - the absence of the American President from the high table of the very grouping his own first term helped resurrect — speaks volumes about Washington’s current strategic priorities.

A summit that never was

The most visible casualty of this neglect was the 2025 Quad Leaders’ Summit. The summit was expected to take place in late 2025 with India as the host and President Trump in attendance, but ultimately did not happen, primarily due to heightened tensions between the US and India. Trump’s decision not to attend appears to have had both policy and personal reasons. On the policy side, he demanded that New Delhi agree to a new US-India free trade agreement as a deliverable before his visit.

The consequences rippled far beyond a missed photo opportunity. Trump’s snub was a setback not only for the Modi government but also for the wider partnership committed to a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, with the Quad now risking a loss of momentum. And as if to underscore the perverse priorities at play, Trump chose to visit Beijing rather than New Delhi, sending a message that shook the confidence of all three Quad partners simultaneously.

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