India is doing its best to stay on President Donald Trump’s good side. For starters, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to visit Washington on Wednesday to meet with Trump.
The foreign leader is expected to arrive “with trade concessions in his back pocket,” said Milan Vaishnav, director and senior fellow of the South Asia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“If you look at last week’s budget announcement, the finance minister already announced a reduction of import duties on a range of items,” he added.
As NDTV, an Indian news outlet, reported, the South Asian country slashed customs duties on high end goods like motorcycles, cars and smartphone parts, boosting American companies like Harley-Davidson, Tesla and Apple.
It’s possible Trump will celebrate these wins after his meeting with Modi, who could offer even more trade concessions and continued cooperation with Indian deportees. But that doesn’t guarantee Modi that India — the most populous country in the world — will be safe from the growing trade wars.
Could India be the next victim of Trump’s tariffs?
Last month, Trump said countries like China, India and Brazil were ”tremendous (tariff-makers)” while speaking to House Republicans at a retreat in Florida last month.
Then, he revealed his own plans: “We’re going to put tariffs on outside countries and people that really mean harm to us. Well. … they mean us harm, but they basically want to make their country good,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let that happen any longer … because we’re going to put America first,” he promised.
More recently, the White House announced its plan to impose 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada and 10% tariffs on goods imported from China, as the Deseret News reported. The plan also included a 10% tariff on energy resources from Canada. But before these orders could take effect, both Mexico and Canada made pledges to help the U.S. in reducing the flow of fentanyl and better policing their borders in exchange for a 30-day extension on the tariffs.
Despite Trump’s recent scrutiny toward New Delhi, the Indian finance minister says their recent budget adjustments are to strengthen their own economy by creating a “manufacturing hub.”
Still, it’s good news for U.S. businesses as India is expected to continue making compromises as it slowly opens up its domestic market, home to an estimated 1.4 billion people, to the rest of the world.
“I suspect we’ll see an even wider list tailor-made for the United States in the coming days,” said Vaishnav, “which is why I doesn’t think Trump will take any stringent measures against New Delhi.
“While India might be a victim of Trump’s trade war in the case of across-the-board tariffs, I don’t sense a desire to specifically target India,” he said.
“And, thus far, India has bent over backward to signal cooperation, including by repatriating thousands of irregular Indian migrants currently being held in America.”
India accepted 104 deportees, who arrived in shackles onboard a U.S. military plane. About 487 more individuals could also be deported, according to the Indian authorities.
Amid media scrutiny over the treatment of the deportees, India’s Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri defended the use of military aircrafts, saying the deportations were “described as a national security operation.”
What’s the future of India-U.S. relations?
Modi’s visit follows a recent phone conversation between the freshly sworn in U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and his Indian counterpart, Rajnath Singh.
The pair talked about the ”bilateral defense relationship” between the two countries. Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar also came to Washington, D.C., for Trump’s inauguration.
Trump and Modi share a good relationship. “I am a big fan of Hindus and I’m a big fan of India,” Trump said in 2016 at an event hosted by the Republican Hindu Coalition. He also hosted the “Howdy Modi” summit that took place in 2019. It featured a rally with Modi in Houston, Texas, that attracted a crowd of over 50,000, as the Deseret News reported.
It’s also worth noting the U.S. is one of India’s largest trading partners. In 2021, overall U.S.-India bilateral trade in goods and services reached a record $157 billion.
Of course, Modi isn’t the only friendly foreign leader to stop by the White House of late. Last week, Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru of Japan shared a string of compliments about his American counterpart, following their first meeting together. He called Trump “very sincere and very powerful and strong willed.”
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also visited Trump last week, marking Trump’s first meeting with a world leader since he retook the Oval Office. The meeting focused on negotiating the second phase of the three-phase ceasefire deal with Hamas, as the Deseret News reported.
At a Senate confirmation hearing last week, Jamieson Greer, President Donald Trump’s pick for trade representative, advocated for the U.S. to gain more access to global markets by using tools like tariffs to start negotiations.
“For many decades, we have had a trading system where the United States opens its market over and over again, and others do not,” Greer, a lawyer and a Brigham Young University graduate, said. “In India, for example, their average inbound tariff rate on agricultural products is 39%. In Turkey, it’s 39.8%.”
The Trump administration 2.0 is enforcing a 25% tax on foreign steel and aluminum, similar to the 2018 move during Trump’s first term. The idea is to offer relief to domestic producers but comes at the cost of ruffling some “international” feathers and raising prices for American manufacturers who depend on imports.
Last time around, India retaliated by imposing higher custom duties on 28 American products, like almonds, pulses and walnuts.
These tensions simmered down under former President Joe Biden in 2023, when the U.S. removed the steel and aluminum tax following Modi’s visit to Washington, D.C. India reciprocated by opening up its market.
Some uncertainty lingers now that Trump is back in the White House. “The bigger concern for India is the indirect effect of the trade turmoil: uncertainty is bad for trade and investment, both of which India desperately needs to get its economy back on track,” said Vaishnav.