Outspoken critic of Trump’s tariffs on India, Ro Khanna wins sixth term in Democratic House
Washington, Nov 4 (IANS) Ro Khanna, the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans and one of the most outspoken critics of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on India, has won a sixth term in the US House of Representatives, returning to a chamber that Democrats will now control.
Khanna, a Democrat, is the winner in California’s 17th congressional district over Republican Ritesh Tandon by about 71 per cent to 29 per cent. About 44 per cent of the expected votes were counted when the race was called.
The Silicon Valley lawmaker’s link to India runs through his family. His grandfather, Amarnath Vidyalankar, spent his life fighting for India’s independence from British rule, spent a few years in jail for the cause and became a member of India’s first Parliament.
“Because of my grandfather, I was influenced by Gandhi’s thinking, by Nehru’s beautiful speeches about liberal democracy, about pluralism,” Khanna told NBC News in 2023. “Those are the values I champion. … I’ve spoken out where I think those values are being challenged.”
Khanna has made the strain in US-India ties a central theme over the past year. After Trump raised tariffs on Indian goods to 50 per cent, including an additional 25 per cent tied to India’s purchases of Russian oil under an August 6, 2025 executive order, he accused the President of putting personal grievance ahead of a decades-old partnership.
“Trump is destroying 30 years of bipartisan work to build the US-India strategic partnership because Modi refuses to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize. He imposed higher tariffs of 50% on India than China,” Khanna said in September 2025.
He also challenged Indian Americans who backed Trump. “I am waiting for all those Indian Americans who voted for Trump over Harris — you know who you are — to speak out against Trump sabotaging the partnership with blanket tariffs that are harsher than those on China. Anyone willing to speak up?” he wrote.
“We can’t allow the ego of Donald Trump to destroy a strategic relationship with India that is key to ensuring that America leads and not China,” he said.
On October 8, 2025, Khanna and Congresswoman Deborah Ross led a letter from 19 lawmakers urging Trump to “reset and repair” ties with India and end the tariffs, according to a release from Ross’s office.
Khanna’s signature India legislation came in 2022, when the House approved his amendment to the annual defence bill backing a waiver for India from sanctions under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The amendment said a waiver “is in the best interests of the United States and the United States-India defence partnership to deter aggressors in light of Russia and China’s close partnership.” His office called it “the most significant piece of legislation for US and India relations out of Congress since the US and India nuclear deal.”
After the Pahalgam terror attack and India’s Operation Sindoor in May 2025, Khanna said on CNN: “India took a response that helped take out some of the terrorist networks. The important thing now is for de-escalation.”
He called Pakistan’s army chief Asim Munir “a dictator” and urged him to “free Imran Khan.”
He attended Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s June 2023 address to Congress, as did all five Indian American members at the time.
Khanna became co-chair of the India Caucus in 2023, alongside Republican Mike Waltz. He was the second Indian American to hold the post, after Ami Bera in 2015.
“I think this is a historic moment for our community. I think we’re really emerging and coming into our own as a strong voice,” he told NBC News at the time. He pledged to make the caucus “about not just us India, but also the Indian American community,” called green-card and tourist-visa backlogs “a top priority”, and championed children who age out of their parents’ visas. “These kids of H1B are like the Dreamers,” he said.
On the H-1B programme, Khanna has said, “There’s definitely abuse… it definitely needs to be corrected,” while adding, “I don’t love the blanket 100,000 fee.”
Khanna sits on the Armed Services Committee, where he is ranking member of the cyber, innovative technologies and information systems subcommittee, as well as the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the Oversight Committee, according to his official website.
His votes in the current Congress place him on the party’s anti-war left. House Clerk records show he voted against the House and final versions of the 2026 defence authorisation bill and against the 2027 bill. He voted against the Republican reconciliation bill in May 2025 and the January 2026 spending package, and for ending the national emergency underpinning tariffs on Canada.
He has broken with his party on immigration at times. In January 2025, he voted for the Republican-backed Preventing Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, which fellow Indian American Democrats Pramila Jayapal and Bera opposed.
By an IANS calculation from House Clerk records, Khanna voted with the majority of Democrats about 97 per cent of the time on roll calls from January 2025 to mid-September 2026 and missed about 11 votes.
Voteview’s DW-NOMINATE scores rank him 58th most liberal among the House Democrats.
He co-wrote the Epstein Files Transparency Act with Republican Thomas Massie, which the House passed on November 18, 2025.
His official website describes his goals as working to “restore American manufacturing and technology leadership, improve the lives of working people, and advance U.S. leadership on climate, human rights, and diplomacy.”
Khanna was born in Philadelphia in 1976 to parents who emigrated from Punjab. He was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration. He defeated incumbent Mike Honda in 2016 after losing to him in 2014.
His campaign raised about $15 million in the 2026 cycle and had about $17 million in cash on hand as of October 14, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
–IANS
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