On April 29, Donald Trump completed 100 days as US president. How has India navigated these first three months, given the high stakes with respect to multiple issues like tariffs, immigration and defence?
On February 12 this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Washington, DC. He was one of the first national leaders of any consequence to visit the United States, barely a month after Trump’s triumphant return to office. Even before he visited Washington, DC, he had dispatched his Minister of External Affairs, S Jaishankar, to meet with his counterpart, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State. Jaishankar, as a senior cabinet official, no doubt enjoys Modi’s confidence and probably prepared the ground for the prime minister’s visit.
Modi’s alacrity in visiting the United States was hardly accidental. Despite their apparent personal bonhomie, Trump had referred to India as the “tariff king” and had made it abundantly clear that he planned to impose significant tariffs on India as part of his trade strategy. Through an early visit to the US, Modi had, no doubt, sought to curry favour with Trump to ward off the punishing tariffs.
Such a strategy had much to recommend it. Trump, who fancies himself a deft negotiator, has many of the attributes of a schoolyard bully. Those who seek to propitiate him can often win favour in his universe. More to the point, even before he visited Washington, DC, Modi had already signalled a willingness to address Trump’s obsession with tariffs. To that end, he had reduced tariffs on a range of American products, including the iconic Harley-Davidson motorcycle, a symbol of American manufacturing. During his visit, likely at Trump’s prodding, Modi also made a tentative offer to purchase an unspecified number of F-35 fighter aircraft for the Indian Air Force — an extraordinary expense that India will incur if it proceeds with this acquisition.
The Modi government had also accepted a host of Indian illegal immigrants whom the Trump administration had deported. Even as some members of the Opposition expressed reservations about the treatment of these deportees, including reports of them being shackled on the flights from the United States, Modi maintained a studious silence on the matter. All these acts of commission and omission were clearly designed to avoid a fracas with the second Trump administration.
Since his visit, Trump’s new Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, visited India in late March. Her trip included a meeting with Prime Minister Modi and an address to the annual Raisina Dialogue that the Ministry of External Affairs takes part in. During her visit, she highlighted the Trump administration’s interest in working with India on matters ranging from intelligence sharing to counterterrorism — both issues of considerable significance to New Delhi. These visits and gestures all indicated that despite the fraught and contentious issues of tariffs, the relationship was now multi-faceted and that, despite a change in administrations, India enjoyed bipartisan support in the US.
On “liberation day”, April 2, Trump imposed a sweeping set of tariffs on a global basis, not even sparing traditional American allies across Europe. On India, he imposed an overall tariff of 27 per cent. Barely a week later, for complex reasons including significant global backlash, he paused them for the next ninety days. This has provided India with an important reprieve, and the Modi government has made a concerted effort to try to arrive at a trade pact with the United States before the three-month moratorium ends.
Meanwhile, in late April, Vice-President J D Vance and his wife, Usha, who is of Indian heritage, along with their three children, visited India. The visit clearly had both personal and professional components. Quite apart from the obligatory visit to the Taj Mahal, Vance also met with Prime Minister Modi, where he sought to boost two of President Trump’s key goals in the bilateral relationship. The first, of course, was to boost US-India trade and to induce India to reduce a range of tariff barriers. Second, Vance also raised the matter of India purchasing more defence equipment from the United States.
From a strictly bilateral standpoint, the optics of the visit were quite positive. Tragically, a brutal and unprecedented attack on Indian tourists in Kashmir — reportedly carried out by the Resistance Front, an offshoot of the vicious, Pakistan-based terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba — cast a pall over the vice-president’s maiden visit to the country.
The timing of this horrific incident notwithstanding — and one which the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, has unequivocally condemned — it appears that US-India relations remain on an even keel in an otherwise turbulent and uncertain world. The key issue, which hangs like a sword of Damocles over the relationship, is the question of tariffs. If New Delhi manages to demonstrate some dexterity in tackling this vexed issue, then a bilateral relationship that has gathered much steam since the end of the Cold War may not lose its momentum.
Sumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow and directs the Huntington Program on US-India Relations at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
US President Donald Trump in a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi (File Photo) 
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