Modi’s White House Invite Calms Indian Fears Over Trump’s Plans

India’s foreign minister’s seat at the inauguration caused a surprise

By: John Elliott

Off we go!

Positive news is rare these days from Washington DC but India scored when President Donald Trump invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week to visit him soon, probably in February, putting Modi at the top list of favored country leaders – the first to visit will be Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu who is due there on February 4. Modi’s invitation allays Indian concerns about whether Trump, in his second term’s more focused but unpredictable approach, would continue to offer the close relationship with the Indian prime minister that both men enjoyed in his first presidency.

Modi wasn’t invited to the inauguration on February 20, though Mukesh Ambani, India’s top tycoon and one of the world’s richest men, was there with his wife. That however wasn’t a slight, as became clear when India’s well-connected external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, was given a prime position in the front row at the inauguration ceremony, just below where Trump stood to make his speech. The Australian and Japanese foreign ministers, whose countries form the Quad defense alliance with the US and India, were in rows behind.

Jaishankar’s pole position showed that immense lobbying by him and his fellow diplomats had paid off. Of special significance, close relations have been gradually established since 2022 with Michael Waltz, the new National Security Adviser, and also with Marco Rubio, the new Secretary of State.

The India-US relationship has been growing without interruption since President Clinton began positive moves with a visit to Delhi in 2000. It had been generally assumed, till Trump’s recent victory, that this would continue whichever party won the presidency.

Relations will however now become far more transactional. The fact that the two leaders basked in triumphal joint “Howdy Modi” and “Namaste Trump” rallies when they visited each other’s countries in 2019 and 2020 provides a good starting point, but Trump’s determined “America First” approach is set to demand more from India.

India made a sensible move when it reacted positively to Trump’s recent announcement that he wanted countries to take back illegal immigrants. India said it would do so for those whose nationality was verified. According to the Pew Research Center, there were an estimated 725,000 undocumented Indian immigrants in the US in 2024.

“India will do the right thing,” said Trump after a phone call with Modi on February 2, though vetting and dispatching immigrant returnees could pose problems.

A read-out issued by the White House after the call said the talks had been “productive” with Modi focusing on two points – India should be increasing its “procurement of American-made security equipment and moving towards a fair bilateral trading relationship”.

Shortly after that, in an address to Republican lawmakers, Modi threatened tariffs against India, clubbing it with China and Brazil in the BRICS club of countries that “mean the US harm” and exploited the US market.

Trump called India a “very big abuser” of trade during his re-election campaign last year. The US is India’s second-largest trading partner after China, with India recording a $35bn trade surplus with Washington between January and November 2024.

The US has gradually become a major supplier of defense equipment worth a total of over US$20 billion since 2008, accounting for 10 percent of the total purchases. But Russia, which dominated India’s purchases with 70 percent or more for decades, still accounts for nearly 40 percent of the total, a figure which Trump will want to see reduced. The war in Ukraine has slowed Russian supplies, which might make it easier for Trump’s demands to be at least partially met.

During the Biden regime, Jaishankar and Modi persuaded the US and other western powers to accept that the country’s historically close relationship with Russia meant it would ignore Ukraine war-generated trade boycotts on oil as well as defense purchases.

Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s petroleum minister, was reported to have said last week that the country’s Russian oil purchases had risen from 0.2 percent in 2022 to 30 percent because of available discounts. He echoed Jaishankar’s message over the past two years that India would buy oil at the lowest available prices. “If it’s available at good discounts, we will buy it,” he told reporters. Trump aims to boost America’s oil exports with his “drill baby drill” call to US companies but India will demand competitive prices.

During Biden’s presidency, India also managed to deflect criticisms of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist approach to Muslims and other minorities, and its curbs on media and other personal freedoms. These issues will presumably be of less concern to Trump.

Modi will be meeting Trump at a time when he has regained most of his prime ministerial image and authority after poor results in last year’s general election that forced his Bharatiya Janata Party into an active coalition with smaller parties,

He faces a key test, however, on February 5 when assembly elections will be held in Delhi. Since 2015, the BJP has failed to wrest power from the relatively new Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Modi’s government has continually tried to undermine AAP’s success, including jailing its leader Arvind Kejriwal and other ministers on corruption charges. Modi’s standing will be weakened if those jailings and other attacks fail to unseat the AAP and give the BJP victory next week.

In a social media post on January 27, Modi called Trump a “dear friend” and said they were “committed to a mutually beneficial and trusted partnership”. Modi’s visit to Washington will test how much Trump is prepared to allow that cooperative approach to continue for the next four years.

John Elliott is Asia Sentinel’s South Asia correspondent. He blogs at Riding the Elephant.