The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will try to rekindle his joke with Donald Trump, and avoid the anger of the president of the United States on rates and immigration, when they meet Thursday at the White House.
Trump will press for a “fair” commercial agreement with India, while the two leaders will also discuss a new Military Defense and Sales Association during the meeting, said White House officials said.
Modi will hold a joint press conference with Trump, a rare movement of the Indian leader, who is a prolific user of social networks, but rarely take questions from journalists.
He will also celebrate an individual meeting with the technological billionaire Elon Musk, who has launched an aggressive effort like the man to the right of Trump to review the federal bureaucracy.
“There is a lot of natural warmth that dates back to President Trump’s first mandate,” said a senior Trump administration official.
But the official said that although there was “early body language of the government of India that has been well received”, they were “modest steps” and remained “much more work to do.”
Until now, Modi has offered rapid rates concessions before his visit, with New Delhi reduction tasks in high-end motorcycles, an impulse to Harley-Davidson, the iconic American manufacturer whose struggles in India have bothered Trump.
The two leaders would make a greater impulse towards a commercial agreement with a hope of having it in their place at some point in this year, added the official.
American officials said it would depend on Trump talk about any possible tariff in India.
The United States had a commercial deficit of $ 45.6 billion with India in 2024, according to US figures.
India has already accepted an American military flight with 100 migrants chained last week as part of Trump’s immigration review, and New Delhi has promised his own “strong repression” for illegal migration.
The main diplomat of his career in India, Vikram Misri, said last week that there had been a “very close relationship” between the leaders, although their ties have not achieved a great advance in a bilateral commercial agreement for a long time .
Modi was one of the first to congratulate “Good friend” Trump after his November electoral victory.
For almost three decades, US presidents of both parties have prioritized construction ties with India, seeing a natural partner against a rising China.
But Trump has also been unleashed in India for commerce, the greatest concern of the foreign policy of his new term, in the past, qualifying the fifth largest economy in the world as the “greatest tariff abuser.”
The former Trump property tycoon has tariffs without apologies with tariffs against friends and enemies from his return.
‘Trump’s anger’
Modi “has prepared for this, and is trying to avoid Trump’s anger,” said Lisa Curtis, director of the National Security Council in Asia del Sur during Trump’s first mandate.
While US public care has focused on deporting Latin Americans, India is the third largest source of undocumented immigrants in the United States after Mexico and El Salvador.
Indian activists burned a Trump effigy last week after migrants on the United States plane flew again in the shackles throughout the trip, while the opposition accused the government of Hindu-Nacionalist weakness of Modi.
However, one thing that Modi must avoid is the official scrutiny of the United States of history about the rights of Muslims and other minorities.
It is unlikely that Trump highlights a problem on which the administration of former President Joe Biden offered gentile critic.
Modi is the fourth world leader in visiting Trump since his return, following the prime ministers of Israel and Japan, and the king of Jordan.
Modi regularly courted Trump during his first mandate.
The two share a lot in common, and both campaign in promises to promote majority communities about minorities and both annulled dissent.
In 2020, Modi invited Trump to a crowd that vibrant of more than 100,000 people to inaugurate the world’s largest Cricket stadium in his native state in Gujarat.
Trump could visit India at the end of this year for a quad summit, a four -way group from Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
