Head-on | How Modi-Trump 2.0 can reset India-US ties

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the fourth major foreign leader to be invited to the White House in the first few weeks of Donald Trump’s turbulent, take-no-prisoners presidency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba came last week followed by Jordan’s King Abdullah II. Modi arrived from Paris on February 12 after co-chairing an AI Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The Modi-Trump delegation-level talks, scheduled for February 13, will be brisk and business-like. Trump 2.0 is a very different leader from his first term as president in 2017-21. He shocked the world last week with his proposal to make Gaza a “Riviera of the Middle East”, displacing two million Palestinians who have just returned to their homes in Gaza, reduced to rubble by 16 months of Israeli bombing.

A truculent Trump has meanwhile unleashed billionaire Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), on the US government bureaucracy, forced Panama to cancel its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) agreement with China, threatened Canada and Mexico with 25 per cent import tariffs (on hold for a month), pushed Denmark to cede sovereignty over Greenland to the US, and warned the European Union (EU) that it will be the next target for US tariffs if it doesn’t buy more American goods.

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Tariffs are Trump’s weapons of choice. He has vowed to slap reciprocal tariffs on all countries as well as 25 per cent duties on metals, including steel and aluminium.

This is the Trump White House Modi will navigate. The visit comes at a sensitive time in India-US ties. Trump’s Republican followers have been emboldened by angry rhetoric on illegal immigration. The deportation of over 100 Indians in shackles on a US military plane last week added to the tension.

Racist roots

Racism is no longer taboo in Trump’s America. A former SpaceX employee, Marko Elez, who worked on Musk’s AI projects, was forced to resign from DOGE after The Washington Post revealed his racist post which Elez quickly deleted.

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This is what Elez posted: “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool. You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity. Normalise Indian hate.”

Musk rushed to Elez’s defence, saying he would re-employ him and posted: “To err is human, to forgive is divine.”

In a charged atmosphere where Indian-Americans run major US tech companies – from Microsoft (Satya Nadella) to Google (Sundar Pichai) – the fear among White Americans, who make up Trump’s largest vote demographic, is that Indians are using H-1B visas to undercut White Americans in professional jobs.

Musk was born in South Africa under apartheid. In a recent post, he condemned the South African government over its policies on land reform. Through the 1800s and 1900s, Black-owned land in South Africa was occupied by Dutch and British colonists. Despite post-apartheid reform, Whites still own 70 per cent of South Africa’s land though they comprise only 7 per cent of South Africa’s population. Land reforms are meant to correct this historical injustice.

Backing Musk’s criticism of land reform in South Africa (where Musk’s father, Errol Musk, still lives), Trump offered to resettle White South Africans in the US – an offer he, notably, did not make to Palestinians in his proposal to rebuild Gaza as a Middle East Riviera.

Modi’s trump card

Trump, above all else, is a businessman. He uses the word “deal” in every conversation. To him the world is awash with deals the US can make to fulfil his “America First” ambition.

Trump knows India is indispensable as a geopolitical counterweight to China. While enhancing India’s role in the Indo-Pacific, Trump will push Modi to buy more US oil and weapons. That suits Modi. With the supply of sanctioned Russian oil and weapons dwindling, buying more from America is practical, even beneficial for India.

India imports crude oil worth $140 billion every year. The US currently supplies just 5 per cent or $7 billion of that. Russia supplies over 35 per cent or $49 billion a year. India can easily replace a significant quantity of Russian crude with US crude, wiping out America’s $36 billion trade deficit with India.

On immigration, there will be tough talk on both sides. But Trump again knows that Silicon Valley needs Indian software engineers. It is illegal immigration from India that’s a red flag. The issue, however, is not a deal-breaker.

A major agenda on the Modi-Trump summit is the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). The multi-national infrastructure initiative proposes a 4,500-kilometre trade route connecting India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Europe.

As one report noted: “Currently, critical maritime chokepoints such as the Malacca Strait, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab el-Mandab are increasingly vulnerable to Chinese influence. According to a Center for International Maritime Security report, China indirectly supports Yemen’s Houthi rebels by purchasing large quantities of Iranian oil, which funds Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The IRGC, in turn, supplies the Houthis with weapons, some of which are reportedly Chinese-made. The Adani group’s acquisition of a 70 per cent stake in Israel’s Haifa Port is a crucial component of the IMEC. This move provides India a foothold in the Mediterranean.”

The big prize Modi is carrying with him to the White House this week, however, is the announcement that India will amend its nuclear liability law by removing clauses in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 (CLND). In the event of a malfunction in a nuclear reactor or an accident, the original supplier will no longer be liable for damages, allowing US companies to build nuclear reactors in India.

The clause had stopped US companies from entering India’s nuclear energy sector for the past 15 years. The announcement to drop liability clauses from the CLND Act of 2010 was made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during her Union Budget speech on February 1, 2025, two weeks before Modi’s US visit.

It’s the kind of deal Trump likes. It could pave the way for a constructive Modi-Trump 2.0.

The writer is an editor, author and publisher. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.