Narendra Modi is expected to offer Donald Trump deals on trade, energy and defence in a meeting the Indian prime minister hopes will help fend off US action on tariffs and migration.
India is billing Thursday’s meeting in Washington, their first since Trump’s inauguration, as a warm meeting of like-minded leaders. However, analysts and people briefed on the trip say Modi will seek to placate a president who has previously called India a “tariff king” and “big abuser”.
While the world’s fifth-largest economy is not a top global exporter, it has high average tariffs and ranks 10th among countries with which the US has a deficit. Between January and November 2024, India’s trade surplus with the US was worth $35bn.
On his campaign website, Trump warned that under a planned “reciprocal tariff act”, the US would match trading partners “an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount” and the rupee exchange rate and equity markets have been roiled by recent presidential pronouncements on trade.
“Modi will be looking to reinforce India’s growing security and economic ties with the US and his personal equation with Trump,” said Priyanka Kishore, founder of research company Asia Decoded, who expects Modi to offer tariff concessions and to pledge to import more American oil and gas.
“India needs to avoid a rupture in commercial ties,” said Richard Rossow, chair on India and emerging Asia economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Engaging President Trump early, perhaps armed with new purchases of American goods and resolving a few areas of trade friction, should help set a relatively positive course for the next four years.”
A person familiar with details of the visit said it was “quite clear” Trump expected India to buy more from the US, including American oil. Last year the US supplied India with about 65mn barrels of crude, just over one-tenth of the 630mn it imported from Russia, its biggest supplier.
Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s oil minister, declined to be drawn in an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday on whether India would provide concrete undertakings to buy more energy from the US. “It’s entirely possible: more energy interaction with different countries of the world, including in particular the United States,” Puri said.
New Delhi took pre-emptive action ahead of Modi’s trip, unveiling budget plans to slash duties on imports including textiles and motorcycles — the latter measure addressing longtime Trump complaints about the costs imposed on US producer Harley-Davidson.
In a phone conversation last month, Trump pushed Modi to buy more American weapons. The US is already one of the largest sellers of helicopters, transport and maritime patrol aircraft and other hardware to the world’s biggest arms-importing country. Under the Biden administration, General Electric signed an agreement to co-produce advanced jet engines with India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics. Final details of the deal are still under negotiation.
Indian media have speculated that Modi might also meet Trump ally Elon Musk, who has in the past voiced interest in investing in the world’s most populous country through his companies SpaceX and Tesla.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has applied for permission to operate in the country, where it would take on internet companies Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries. Tesla looked last year at building its first electric vehicle plant in India, but Musk then abruptly postponed a planned India visit, travelling to China instead.
In a move seen as appeasing Washington, India last week also quietly accepted a military flight carrying 104 undocumented Indian migrants, some of whom were restrained with handcuffs and leg chains.
Opposition lawmakers disrupted parliament to protest against the treatment of the migrants, which Gaurav Gogoi, an MP from the opposition Indian National Congress, called “degrading”.
Outside the Americas, India is one of the largest sources of illegal border crossers from Canada and Mexico into the US and the future of visas for skilled Indian migrants from India and elsewhere has been questioned by the new administration.
Trump’s inauguration has prompted speculation that two high-profile US legal cases opened during Biden’s presidency might be resolved.
In October US authorities charged Vikash Yadav, a former Indian government employee, for his role in an alleged foiled assassination attempt against Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun. Yadav is in India and has not entered a plea. His alleged co-conspirator, Nikhil Gupta pleaded not guilty in a US federal court last June.
Trump announced this week that the US would stop enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, with existing cases brought under the legislation banning bribery of other countries’ officials to be reviewed.
It is unclear what this will mean for the Adani Group, whose founder Gautam Adani alongside seven others was charged by the US justice department and Securities and Exchange Commission with involvement in a multiyear scheme to bribe Indian officials for solar power business.
Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani were charged with securities fraud, but not under the corrupt practices act. Adani Group has called the accusations “baseless”.
Outwardly, the Trump-Modi relationship remains upbeat, reflecting past friendly ties between the two leaders and expanding US-Indian defence, technology and other co-operation designed to counteract China.
In an interview on the Flagrant podcast in October, Trump described the Indian leader as “a friend”, “the nicest” and, apparently in jest, “a total killer”.
“The fact that the prime minister has been invited to visit the US within barely three weeks of the new administration taking office shows the importance of the India-US partnership,” Vikram Misri, India’s top diplomat, said last week. The two leaders had a “very close rapport” dating back to Trump’s first term, Misri said.
“India has been for some time, particularly under Modi, one of the most pro-American countries in the world,” said Indrani Bagchi, chief of the Ananta Centre, a think-tank in New Delhi. “We are also in the business of making India great again, so there are areas where we can build some synergies that are useful.”
Additional reporting by Leslie Hook in London; data visualisation by Haohsiang Ko
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