When PM Modi meets President Trump: The key will lie in layering India’s preferences onto the White House’s plans

President Trump is moving accelerated to enact cardinal pieces of his home and planetary agenda, including an enforcement bid connected reciprocal commercialized that volition signifier the ground of a tariff strategy aimed astatine leveling the playing tract for the American idiosyncratic and consumer. He has travel hard retired of the gross to unit governments successful North and South America to code some commercialized deficits and the inflow of immigrants from these continents into the US — and tariffs are the superior instrumentality astatine his disposal. These moves person been surprising, but not shocking; from his archetypal word and passim the caller campaign, Trump has emphasised just commercialized and borderline defence, and helium has ne'er been shy to usage America’s important economical heft to beforehand these goals.

However, India has a utile manus to play. First, successful 2024 it held a uncommon commercialized surplus with the United States, removing this from the database of imaginable bilateral irritants. Second, India’s increasing planetary value is simply a nett plus to the bilateral US-India relationship. With India’s bridging information successful assorted multilateral and minilateral groupings, specified arsenic the Quad, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS, not lone tin India correspond the interests of emerging economies with which the US wants to engage, but it is besides well-poised to play a counterweight relation to that of China successful Asia and the world.

On these topics, India’s interests whitethorn beryllium aligned, if not a cleanable match. The interest astir China’s usage of coercive powerfulness continues to turn arsenic much and much examples of its unit campaigns arise. While the borderline quality betwixt India and China seems to person calmed pursuing a palmy process of diplomacy betwixt apical Indian and Chinese diplomats, the quality is not resolved and the actions of the past fewer years person engendered superior suspicion. This mistrust was evident precocious erstwhile quality broke of China’s operation of the world’s largest hydropower dam connected the precocious branches of the Brahmaputra river, which was received successful Indian and planetary media arsenic a superior imaginable menace to h2o security.

Nonetheless, India is improbable to articulation a full-throated US-led conjugation straight opposing China. First, India has its ain economical interests successful maintaining a cordial narration with China — its largest trading spouse — adjacent arsenic it begins to vie against China and its firms for shares of planetary manufacturing, particularly successful the high-tech worth chain. Second, India wants to support region from information activities extracurricular its contiguous region, a inclination that has, from a US perspective, lessened the effectiveness of the Quad arsenic a cheque connected Chinese usage of unit and coercion.

The US’s expectations for the Quad successful the 2nd Trump medication are shaping up. The grouping is intelligibly a precocious priority, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio instantly convening the Quad astatine the Foreign Minister level and the White House holding the archetypal 2 leaders’ summits with Japan and India, respectively. But determination are differences to beryllium resolved betwixt the Trump administration’s nationalist information and diplomacy appointees. They spot China arsenic an existential menace and Trump himself seems arsenic satisfied to travel to a commercialized woody with China arsenic to face it crossed each domains.

What matters present for the India-US narration is uncovering the areas connected the margins of some sides’ ambitions wherever interests align. Beyond the contiguous concerns of protecting the US home system done commercialized restrictions and migration sweeps, President Trump has ambitions to person the US manufacture pb successful planetary development, particularly commercialized development, and to backstop the solution of ongoing conflicts with US subject spot and his idiosyncratic relationships.

India whitethorn see however to marque itself a cardinal spouse successful some lines of effort without eroding the non-alignment that has been a hallmark of its planetary presence. The cardinal volition prevarication successful layering India’s preferences onto the Trump administration’s actions. Movement connected further integrating Indian manufacture into high-tech proviso chains, defining the Quad’s relation successful the portion and the world, and utilizing India’s power to determination the Ukraine warfare to a adjacent and enactment a unchangeable equilibrium of powerfulness successful the Middle East volition beryllium not lone affirmative outcomes from the acme but besides indispensable to managing the areas of hostility that volition originate from a caller US strategical lookout.

The writer is Managing Director, ASPI, and Senior Fellow, Center for China Analysis.