By From tariff concessions to accepting deportees, India is pulling out all the stops to win favor with President Donald Trump ahead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the White House on Thursday.
India, the world’s largest democracy, enters a second Trump term in a relatively strong position. Trump and Modi, India’s Hindu nationalist leader of more than a decade, have similar worldviews and a personal rapport that goes back years, and India has become a strategic U.S. partner in countering its neighbor China.
“Donald Trump is not a leader who operates with a very sophisticated framework. A lot of it is based on vibes,” said Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow and director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an international affairs think tank based in Washington.
“And what India has done is make sure the vibes are good.”
Following the leaders of Israel, Japan and Jordan, Modi is only the fourth foreign leader to visit Trump since his inauguration, which Vaishnav said demonstrates India’s importance to the U.S.
But India could be vulnerable on two issues that Trump has made central to his agenda: tariffs and immigration. The world’s fifth-largest economy has a growing trade surplus with the United States and is its largest source of undocumented immigrants outside Latin America.
Indian tariffs on imported goods averaged 11.5% in 2022, according to the World Bank, compared with 1.5% in the United States, and Trump has called India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.
In an effort to avoid the kinds of punishing tariffs Trump has threatened against U.S. allies such as Canada and Mexico, Modi has already made some offerings.
They include cutting taxes on some U.S. products — including the iconic Harley-Davidson motorcycle, which Trump had complained about during his first term — and accepting a planeload of Indian deportees last week.
“India has indicated that, look, we are happy to negotiate, and if it is in mutual interest, we are also prepared to give concessions,” said Amitendu Palit, a former Indian finance ministry official and a senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore.
