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Narendra Modi is visiting Washington DC this week to meet Donald Trump amid concerns over trade tariffs and visas for Indian skilled workers.
The Indian prime minister is only the second foreign leader, after Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, to be invited by the White House since Mr Trump started his second term last month.
The trip comes as anger is growing in India over the humiliating deportation by the US of over a hundred illegal migrants back to the South Asian country this week.
Foreign policy experts believe that Mr Modi and Mr Trump will talk immigration, trade, and arms sales. China is also set to be on the agenda as Mr Trump looks to India to help counter the Asian giant.
Mr Modi’s visit was announced hours after a US military plane deposited 104 Indian illegal migrants, shackled and chained, in the northern city of Amritsar.
The deportation flight to India was part of Mr Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration in the US, in fulfilment of a key election promise.
The return of the migrants, aged 4 to 46, is being seen as an embarrassment for India and Mr Modi, who boasts of having a personal relationship with the new American president.
Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar told parliament it was standard practice for US authorities to restrain deportees, but this wasn’t done to women and children on the plane, a claim disputed by the returned migrants who said even women were chained.
“We are, of course, engaging with the US government to ensure returning deportees are not mistreated in any manner during the flight,” he said.
Mr Modi’s government has already committed to repatriating nearly 18,000 Indians living in the US, Bloomberg News reported, a decision that is being interpreted as an attempt to placate the new US administration and avoid a trade war.
The Pew Research Center estimates that there are 725,000 illegal Indian immigrants in the US.
Mr Trump has said he is sure India “will do the right thing” when it comes to illegal immigration.
India is hoping the Trump administration will safeguard legal migration pathways for its citizens, including student visas and H-1B visas for skilled workers amid worries that the US will cut the number of permits for Indians.
The sought-after H-1B visas are for skilled workers, typically working in technology, healthcare, engineering, and finance. Indians received around three-quarters of the 386,000 H-1B visas issued in 2023.
Mr Trump has said that he likes “very competent people coming into our country even if that involves them training and helping other people that may not have the qualifications they do”.
But New Delhi remains anxious over the American president’s hawkish outlook on Brics, a group of major economies that includes India and China.
“India’s posture of appeasement is not unique, but it’s very clever,” Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Washington Post. “By making preemptive concessions on relatively minor issues, governments can allow Trump to put quick wins on the board without enduring too much pain themselves.”
Mr Trump in his second term wants more from India. He has called Mr Modi a “great leader” and last week said they were “committed to a mutually beneficial and trusted partnership”.
But he has previously accused India of charging excessive tariffs, even calling the country a “tariff king”, and threatened to impose reciprocal levies.
The president emphasised the importance of “moving towards a fair bilateral trade relationship” during a phone call with Modi last week, according to a White House readout.
India, on its part, has sought to avoid a trade war with its biggest trading partner.
The commerce ministry recently cut tariffs on heavyweight bikes with engines above 1,600cc from 50 per cent to 30 per cent and on smaller models to 40 per cent – complying with Mr Trump’s longstanding demand to reduce levies on high-end motorcycles like the Harley Davidson.
Mr Trump has begun his second presidency by launching a trade war with China. The two countries have announced tit-for-tat levies on a range of goods in recent days.
The US president has also threatened to hit Brics with 100 per cent tariffs if they attempt to introduce an alternative currency to the dollar.
Mr Trump is expected to push Mr Modi to purchase more American military equipment for India, the largest defence importer in the world.
Amitendu Palit, economist at the National University of Singapore, said one risk for India seeking to appease Mr Trump is that it could result in more demands from the US.
“Trump’s trajectory is if you agree to him once, you can’t be sure that it is done forever, because he will come back asking for a higher price,” he told Bloomberg. “That’s a challenge.”
