The Indian prime minister praised Trump while angling to avoid the steep ‘reciprocal’ tariffs the US president plans.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has returned to the White House for his first visit of Donald Trump’s second term as United States president.
Trump and Modi’s relationship has been dubbed a “bromance” in some media outlets – and that affinity continued to simmer strongly during Thursday’s meeting.
The two leaders heaped praise on one another, while publicly sidestepping more prickly points of discussion.
Chief among them was the question of Trump’s newly announced “reciprocal tariffs”, in which he proposes to answer foreign import taxes on US goods with rates equal to what each country imposes.
Trump has long criticised India for its high tariff rate on foreign goods, even reportedly calling Modi the “king of tariffs”.
But at Thursday’s meeting, the two leaders announced they would pursue a “framework” for greater cooperation.
“ Prime Minister Modi and I have agreed that we will be in negotiations to address the long-running disparities,” Trump said, referring to the US-India trade relationship.
“But really, we want a certain level of playing field, which we really think we’re entitled to.”
But their newly announced framework went beyond import taxes, to include collaborations on space travel, international security and the energy trade.
Here are four takeaways from their meeting.
Modi embraces Trump’s MAGA movement
Both right-wing leaders, Modi and Trump have both faced accusations of democratic backsliding in their countries.
The two leaders also recently won re-election in their respective countries: Modi in June, and Trump last November.
Much of their public appearances on Thursday was dedicated to affirming their commitment to one another, with Trump applauding Modi as a “great leader” and Modi calling Trump a “friend”.
Amid the back-slapping, Modi appealed to Trump’s pride in his slogan, “Make America Great Again”, offering an Indian twist on the motto.
“The people of America are aware of President Trump’s motto, ‘Make America Great Again’ or MAGA,” Modi said through a translator.
“Borrowing an expression from the US, our vision for a developed India is to ‘Make India Great Again’, or MIGA. When America and India work together, when it’s MAGA plus MIGA, it becomes mega – a mega partnership for prosperity.”
A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Modi also compared his Hindu nationalist platform to Trump’s “America First” agenda, saying that he too puts his country’s priorities first.
“One thing that I deeply appreciate and I learned from President Trump is that he keeps the national interest supreme,” Modi said through a translator. “And like him, I also keep the national interest of India at the top of everything else.”
India’s concessions on trade
Faced with the prospect of economy-buckling tariffs, world leaders have appealed to Trump with various concessions.
Mexico, for instance, has sent national guard troops to its southern border with the US. Canada set up a joint task force to combat fentanyl trafficking and organised crime.
And on Thursday, Modi arrived with his own offers, designed to blunt any economic measures Trump may take against India.
The two leaders emerged from their closed-door meeting with an agreement to increase trade between their countries, including through partnerships on space travel, artificial intelligence and energy production. Modi pledged a “ new scale and scope” to their shared objectives.
“We have also set ourselves the target of more than doubling our bilateral trade to attain $500bn by 2030,” Modi said.
As of 2024, total trade between the two countries amounted to an estimated $129.2bn, according to US government statistics.
The US has currently a $45.7bn trade deficit with India, with the South Asian country exporting $87.4bn of goods to the US. Trump, however, has publicly expressed his displeasure with such deficits, promising to narrow them and increase US exports.
He has blamed foreign tariffs on US goods, in part, for the disparity.
“Prime Minister Modi recently announced the reductions to India’s unfair, very strong tariffs that limit US access into the Indian market very strongly. And really it’s a big problem, I must say,” Trump repeated on Thursday.
But he flashed signs of optimism, saying that the US bond with India is “the strongest, I believe, it’s ever been”. He also implicated that India would increase its purchase of US energy products, helping to reduce the deficit.
“The prime minister and I also reached an important agreement on energy that will restore the United States as a leading supplier of oil and gas to India. It will be, hopefully, their number-one supplier,” Trump said.
The US president also teased an international infrastructure similar to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, linking allies across the world.
“We agreed to work together to help build one of the greatest trade routes in all of history. It will run from India to Israel to Italy and onward to the United States, connecting our partners by ports, railways and undersea cables – many, many undersea cables,” Trump explained.
He added that it would allow the US to “stay the leader” – a likely reference to continued economic competition with China.
An emphasis on fighting ‘terrorism’
While the meeting was expected to centre on countering China’s international influence, another security matter emerged between the two allies: the spectre of “terrorism”.
Much of the focus was on Trump’s pledge to extradite Chicago businessman Tahawwur Rana. In 2013, a US federal court sentenced Rana, a Pakistani Canadian citizen, to 14 years in prison for “conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist plot” against a news outlet in Denmark.
He was also convicted of providing material support for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which killed 175 people.
Rana has appealed his impending extradition to India, where he is likely to face the death penalty. Last month, the US Supreme Court refused to block the extradition proceedings, and with Trump’s go-ahead on Thursday, it is all but certain to happen.
Modi praised Trump for his decision at Thursday’s news conference, comparing the Mumbai attacks to a “genocide”. He pledged “appropriate action” would be taken against Rana in India’s courts.
“ India and US will stand strongly together in the fight against terrorism,” Modi said.
“We agree that in order to eliminate cross-border terrorism, we need concrete actions. And I’m very grateful to President Trump that, in 2008, somebody who carried out genocide in India – that criminal is now going to be handed over to India.”
Trump, for his part, said the US would increase military sales to India “by many billions of dollars”.
“In addition, the United States and India will be working together like never before to confront the threat of radical Islamic terrorism – a threat all over the world, actually.”
Modi, however, has been accused of turning a blind eye to anti-Muslim violence and spreading anti-Muslim hate speech.
Trump faces questions about Ukraine peace deal
One topic, however, that continued to crop up had little to do with US-India relations.
Instead, Trump repeatedly fielded questions from reporters about his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine.
The conflict started three years ago in February 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country. But on Wednesday, a flurry of high-profile calls raised hopes of a possible peace deal.
Trump had announced that morning that he had conducted a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Putin. He followed up with a second call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But while Trump and Putin exchanged agreements to visit each other’s countries, Ukraine and its European allies expressed increasing scepticism about the supposed negotiations.
Zelenskyy urged international leaders not to take Putin’s assurances at face value – and told news outlets that a peace negotiated without Ukraine’s consent was no peace at all.
Trump, meanwhile, appeared to echo Russian talking points at his news conference with Modi. Russia has long maintained that Ukraine’s desire to enter the NATO alliance was part of its motivations for war.
“Russia has gotten themselves into something that I think they wish they didn’t. If I were president, it would not have happened,” Trump said.
“Now, Russia’s taken over a pretty big chunk of territory. And they also have said from day one, long before President Putin, they’ve said they cannot have Ukraine be in NATO. They said that very strongly. I actually think that that was the thing that caused the start of the war.”
Russia has argued that the US assured the former Soviet Union in 1990 that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward” – though no formal agreement on the matter was ever struck.
Trump previously said it was “unlikely” that Ukraine would gain back the territory Russia started to take with the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
But when asked on Thursday if Russia would give up anything in the peace negotiations, Trump dodged the question.
“It’s too early to say what’s going to happen. Maybe Russia will give up a lot, maybe they won’t, and it’s all dependent on what is going to happen.”