INDIAN-AMERICANS are enjoying a dazzling coming-out party. For years they were stereotyped as convenience-store owners and overachieving children. Yet in American politics, media, entertainment and the arts, they are suddenly everywhere.

Until 2016 only four Indian-Americans had served in Congress. At least 30 stood for this year’s congressional primaries. The first Indian-American of cabinet rank, Nikki Haley, President Donald Trump’s envoy to the UN, is a favourite to succeed him. Journalists such as Fareed Zakaria and Manu Raju stand ready to interview her, and comics such as Aziz Ansari and Hasan Minhaj to mock her. Not coincidentally, given the big role Indian-Americans played in bringing their old and new worlds together, US-Indian relations are also making history. James Mattis and Mike Pompeo, the secretaries of defence and state, are due to meet their Indian counterparts for an inaugural “two-plus-two” ministerial summit. The format, previously afforded only to America’s closest allies, is intended to highlight the recent coming together of the world’s biggest democracies. Indeed, India has perhaps fared better under Mr Trump than any other major power.

The president has lambasted allies, clients and adversaries. But India is none of those. As a US “strategic partner”—a status as close to being a US ally as its tradition of non-alignment permits—it has been less bruised. Though America runs a large trade deficit with India, it is a twelfth the size of America’s deficit with China, so less irksome to Mr Trump. Some of his attacks, especially on Pakistan, are welcome to India. The president, who has investments in India and sees its prime minister, Narendra Modi, as a kindred nationalist, may even have a soft spot for the country. Mr Modi’s visit to Washington last year was strikingly convivial.

The improvement in US-Indian relations, which began under Bill Clinton and accelerated under his two immediate successors, is based on shared values, interests and fear. Both countries are liberal democracies. India’s economic priority, to develop its vast domestic market, is an opportunity for US firms. Above all, both are nervous about China—which India, soon the most populous country, alone in Asia can balance. That apprehension persuaded George W. Bush to give India’s nuclear-weapons programme a carve-out from the usual counter-proliferation strictures. Yet far from offering ground for complacency, the US-India partnership would be insufficient even if it were as strong as it seems. And in reality it is weaker. The last-minute postponement of plans for the vaunted two-plus-two summit seems indicative of that.

Of the two tracks the relationship is built on, defence and security, and trade and investment, the first is in better shape. Little over a decade ago India, which has long bought most of its arms from Russia, tended to view America’s military reach with suspicion. It is now a cornerstone of America’s quadrilateral partnership for the Pacific, alongside Australia and Japan. It conducts more military exercises with America than with any other country. And America’s Pacific strategy has been renamed the Indo-Pacific strategy in its honour. Even so, the bilateral partnership does not seem commensurate with the potential Chinese threat.

The two countries do not even agree on what the Indo-Pacific describes. America views it as everything east of India, but India is more concerned with its west, including Pakistan, Iran and the Arabian Gulf, where it has energy and security interests that often run contrary to American policy. More worryingly, India is starting to doubt the superpower’s seriousness. America has mulled over committing only $1.5bn to its Indo-Pacific strategy. It is scarcely present in trouble-spots such as Bangladesh and Myanmar where India is already fighting a shadow war for influence with China. “People are too polite to say, ‘Where’s the US?’ But a lot of people think that,” says Shivshankar Menon, a former Indian national security adviser. This retrenchment predates Mr Trump. Yet he has exacerbated it, by gutting the State Department and through his preference for dealmaking over strategy. That trait has caused much bigger friction in US-Indian economic ties.

Mr Trump’s call for “reciprocal” tariffs with India, where income per head is an eighth of the American average, has caused disbelief in Delhi. It has also collided with Mr Modi’s protectionism. India has recently raised tariffs several times, a rare occurence since it began liberalising its economy three decades ago. Mr Trump’s threatened crackdown on immigration, which India considers a branch of trade, has gone down even worse. Last year saw a 28% fall in the number of Indians obtaining US student visas. America has also made it harder to secure the H-1B visa that is popular with highly skilled Indians. They are starting to look elsewhere for opportunity, says the vice-chancellor of a leading Indian university. Being familiar with dysfunctional democracy, they are not counting on a post-Trump revival, either. If these tensions are less than America’s trade spat with China, it is in part because India’s and America’s economies are less connected, which suggests a degree of fragility. And while it is said the row has not touched the Indo-US strategic relationship, that may be untrue. Mr Modi made unexpectedly vigorous outreaches to China and Russia this year, on visits to both.

Don’t have a cow

The wasted opportunity this represents extends to Indian-Americans. Replete with sparky, second-generation Americans, who have deeper ties to India than their children will have, they are at a point of maximum potential influence. Ms Haley was in Delhi this week to publicise the ministerial summit; Mr Minhaj has performed his stand-up routine in Mumbai. Such connectors are among the reasons US-India relations, a quiet triumph of American diplomacy, should be developing apace. Instead they are dawdling, which is bad for both countries. China’s assertiveness suggests America needs India even more than Mr Bush imagined. Yet it is in danger of getting less from India than he hoped.