Modi hopes a White House visit will keep India out of Trump's cross hairs

By Mujib Mashal

New Delhi: As he prepared to go to Washington this week, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, spoke of building on the warm relations he shared with President Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.

But Trump can be a fickle friend. So when Modi meets with him Thursday, he is expected to bear offerings designed to ease emerging points of friction and preserve growing US-India ties.

One major focus is trade. Indian officials have said that domestic companies are in talks to increase purchases of American energy supplies, particularly liquefied natural gas. The two leaders are also expected to discuss expanded spending on US defense equipment and potentially announce new deals.

In addition, Modi can point to recent reductions in Indian tariffs on high-end American motorcycles -- namely Harley-Davidsons -- and the prospect of lower duties on goods like bourbon and pecans, which are produced mainly in Republican states.

These moves, though largely symbolic in some cases, are intended to placate Trump's irritation over the American trade deficit with India and the high import duties that make India a difficult market to enter.

On another big source of tension, illegal immigration, Modi has already offered concessions. India accounts for the largest group of migrants to the United States outside Latin America. The Indian government has made clear it will cooperate with Trump's deportation drive, even as it caused a political headache for Modi last week.

The arrival of 100 shackled and handcuffed Indians on an American military plane, just days before Modi was to go to Washington, left his government scrambling to play down the episode and contain a domestic backlash.

India is acutely aware that the trade and immigration issues are a potential double whammy in Trump's universe of preoccupations.

So far, while Trump has threatened even close allies with punitive tariffs over these issues, India has managed to stay out of his cross hairs. If any country can walk the tightrope of Trump's hurricane-force return to power, India believes it is the one.

The two countries, the world's largest democracies, have grown more closely aligned economically and geopolitically as they see a shared threat in an increasingly assertive China.

Modi will be the fourth world leader to meet with Trump since he took office about three weeks ago, after a visit to the White House by the Japanese prime minister and talks with the Israeli and Jordanian leaders over war in the Middle East.

Trump and Modi share much in common. Both are strongman leaders who hold largely transactional views of foreign policy, with a populist's sense of what plays well with the base.

Even as Modi has shown a willingness to go along with Trump's muscle-flexing, he is working to get what India needs out of the relationship. That is particularly true with Trump's push to undo a range of Biden-era legal actions.

There has been speculation that the Justice Department could drop criminal charges of fraud and bribery against Gautam Adani, a billionaire ally of Modi.

India is also hoping to move on from US legal actions related to accusations of an Indian government plot to assassinate an American citizen on US soil.

Even during the Biden administration, officials took pains to deal with the assassination case largely privately, a sign of how important the countries' trade and defense ties have become.

The relationship has enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, including among lawmakers who are now in Trump's inner circle and view India as important in sharing the burden of containing China.

In addition to the "very close rapport" between Trump and Modi, Vikram Misri, India's foreign secretary, has listed several areas of "convergence of interest" between the two nations.

Misri pointed to expanding technology and trade connections, as well as joint efforts on counterterrorism and on security in the Indo-Pacific region. He also highlighted the increasingly influential Indian diaspora in the United States, as well as the large numbers of Indian students studying there.

An important area of alignment that could help both leaders claim victories is defense cooperation, particularly weapons spending.

India is the world's largest importer of military arms, accounting for nearly 10% of the global total, according to the Stockholm Institute of Peace Research.

For decades, cheap and reliable Russian equipment made up the bulk of India's defense purchases. American equipment was expensive and out of reach because of long-standing US suspicions over India's ties to Russia.

US defense sales to India now approach $25 billion a year, up from almost nothing in 2008. With India expected to spend more than $200 billion over the next decade to modernize its military, according to the Congressional Research Service, purchases from the United States are likely to only grow.

When Modi spoke with Trump by phone shortly after his inauguration last month, "the president emphasized the importance of India increasing its procurement of American-made security equipment," the White House said in a statement.

India, however, has been trying to move past simple purchases of US equipment so that the deals generate much-needed jobs and industrial capacity at home.

"If India is to become a net security provider in this part of the world, you have to build capacities as well," said Ashok Malik, the India chair at the Asia Group and a former foreign policy adviser to the Modi government.

Some of the biggest deals in recent years have brought India into the development and production of equipment. In 2023, General Electric announced that it would jointly produce jet engines in India. In its final weeks, the Biden administration also announced that India would become "the first global producer" of Stryker combat vehicles.

Concrete steps on these deals, as well as finalizing other purchases -- including of patrol and reconnaissance aircraft for the Indian navy -- could be among the announcements that follow Modi's meeting with Trump.

"All options are under discussion," Sanjeev Kumar, India's defense production secretary, said before the trip. "We certainly wish to expedite the transactions with the US"