Trump to Meet With India’s Narendra Modi in U.S. Next Week

Former President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he will meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi next week during his upcoming visit to the United States.
Modi is expected to be in the U.S. this weekend as it coincides with a major diplomatic event— the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue summit, known as the Quad. Set to be hosted by President Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, the summit will also feature the leaders of Australia and Japan.
This strategic alliance, formed in response to the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, has evolved into a significant partnership aimed at countering regional security threats.
While the meeting between Trump and Modi had not been reported, Trump mentioned it during his speech in Flint, Michigan, marking the first time this meeting was disclosed.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump has referred to Modi as a “great guy” and has voiced his intentions to improve relations with New Delhi. At the same time, he has repeatedly threatened to slap a retaliatory tax on India over its high tariffs on certain U.S. products.
“I don’t blame India,” Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, said during a July campaign event in Michigan. “I blame us for allowing it to happen. It’s not going to happen anymore.”
The upcoming meeting adds to Trump’s recent diplomatic engagements with prominent foreign leaders as he is set to face off against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, in November.
Earlier this year, Trump held discussions with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a nationalist leader he frequently praises, and Polish President Andrzej Duda. Trump also met with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
Foreign officials have often argued that meetings with opposition figures, including Trump, are part of routine diplomatic efforts. However, this meeting has drawn attention due to Modi’s polarizing leadership, characterized by a strong emphasis on Hindu nationalism during his decade-long tenure.
Newsweek reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaign via email for comment.
While the fight over foreign policy has primarily focused on wars raging in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip and intensified global competition with China, two nuclear-armed rival powers in South Asia are also eyeing the outcome of what has emerged as a historically turbulent election season. Officials from India and Pakistan previously told Newsweek they are preparing to work with either candidate in pursuit of stronger ties.
India’s relationship with the U.S. has been on the upswing. Once-fraught ties during the Cold War have evolved this century into a growing partnership that includes greater cooperation in intelligence-sharing and defense, which has been expanded under both Trump and Biden.
While the partnership has not been without its challenges under both administrations, Indian officials in July exuded confidence that they could work constructively with either Trump or Harris, who would become the first-ever U.S. presidential candidate of Indian heritage.
“India and the U.S. have a Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership,” a spokesperson for the Indian External Affairs Ministry previously told Newsweek. “The India-US relationship enjoys bipartisan support in the US and has strengthened under every administration.”
A spokesperson for the Indian Embassy to the U.S. also noted that “India and the United States enjoy a comprehensive global strategic partnership driven by shared democratic values,” and told Newsweek that “the relationship enjoys wide support in both India and USA and we are confident of further strengthening it.”
Overall, the U.S.-India relationship has trended toward even closer ties, which Harris has also advocated for. The vice president, who is of both Indian and Jamaican descent, spoke at length about her personal ties to India during Modi’s visit to Washington, D.C., last year. Her family’s ancestral village of Thulasendrapuram in the southern state of Tamil Nadu has expressed jubilation over her chances of becoming U.S. president.
But Harris has also invoked these ties to criticize India on human rights, saying during a meeting with Modi in 2021 that she knew “from personal experience and from my family of the commitment of the Indian people to democracy and to freedom and to the work that may be done and can be done to imagine and then actually achieve our vision for democratic principles and institutions.”
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.