<p>During Modi’s administration, India has witnessed significant adjustments in terms of India’s foreign trade policy, from withdrawing from ASEAN-centered Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) to joining the U.S.-centered Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and accelerating free trade negotiations with advanced economies. The macro-level geopolitical and micro-level cost-benefit perspectives are insufficient to explain the incentive and constraints behind the shift. This paper looks at the state-society interactions in the process of India’s foreign economic policy adjustment and analyzes how the domestic social coalitions and the bureaucracies reacted to each other in the negotiation. It argues that the division of the Indian business community and the alliance of oppositions inside the business community with farmer groups on the issue of RCEP forced the state, which was oscillating between market openness and protectionism, to ultimately opt out of the negotiations. In contrast, in the new round of trade negotiations, the business community reached a unified alliance and stood with the government, the farmer groups were pacified. And with the power structure, decision-making pattern and guiding principles of foreign economic policy in the cabinet changing, the state also took actions to actively buy off and appease the opposition, reducing resistance in the new round FTA negotiations. This finding provides an insider’s perspective for understanding the turn in India’s foreign economic policy, and is also instructive for recognizing future trends in Indian economic and trade cooperation with other major economies.</p>