Modi’s Washington visit highlights India’s importance to the US, but will not resolve long-term challenges

The two share similar views and Trump is popular among Indians. But India is not yet equipped to be the bulwark against China that the US wants it to be.

Expert comment Updated 7 March 2025 4 minute READ

Dr Chietigj Bajpaee

Senior Research Fellow for South Asia, Asia-Pacific Programme

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States this week highlights the priority that Washington attaches to its relationship with India. The visit may help resolve immediate tensions, but is likely to do little to resolve mismatched expectations.

Modi will be the fourth foreign leader to visit President Donald Trump during his second term, following the Israeli and Japanese prime ministers and Jordan’s King Abdullah. Though the visit in part reflects a continuity of US policy and a strong bipartisan consensus on engaging India, Trump views the relationship through a different prism.

India is neither an adversary like China or Iran, nor an ally, like the UK, Japan or NATO member states. As a result, India is not seen as an existential threat to the US, as China is. Nor does it face criticism as an ally that is not ‘pulling its weight’.

Instead, with Trump placing less value on traditional partners, India is well positioned as a member of a coalition of likeminded states.

Reflecting this, one of the first acts by Marco Rubio upon becoming secretary of state was meeting the foreign ministers of the Quad – comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the US. This alludes to a push to elevate this forum, with India notably hosting this year’s Quad summit for the first time.

Both Trump and Modi are strongman leaders with shared perceptions of China and radical Islam as existential threats, a mutual animosity of the liberal media and civil society, well-entrenched economic nationalism and a value-neutral foreign policy dictated by self-interest. Indians are among those most positive about a second Trump term, according to a recent survey.

Trade and immigration: Short-term irritants

To be sure, there is friction, most notably on trade and immigration. Trump accuses India of being a ‘tariff king’ and ‘very big abuser’ and dislikes India’s trade surplus with the US. Modi will seek to address this criticism with offers to buy more American goods, most notably energy and defence products.

New Delhi is likely to be more forthcoming in seeking solutions with Washington on illegal migration.

The Indian economy is also under pressure. While India remains the world’s fastest-growing major economy, growth has slowed to an almost two-year low. 

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party performed worse than expected in last year’s general election, where he was returned to power for a third consecutive term, but on a weakened mandate. This was attributed partly to concerns about the economy. Modi will thus be eager to avoid US tariffs.

On immigration, India is a leading source of both legal and illegal migrants into the US. New Delhi is likely to be more forthcoming in seeking solutions with Washington on illegal migration as the Modi government has been vocal in highlighting on its own illegal migration problem. 

The challenge will be managing the flow: India is the third-largest source of illegal migrants into the US after Mexico and El Salvador. The states where many migrants originate from in India – including Gujarat (Modi’s home state), Punjab and Haryana – hold electoral significance: A flight carrying over 100 illegal immigrants from the US landed in the Indian state of Punjab last week.

On legal migration, Indians are a key beneficiary of the H1B visa programme that some in the MAGA camp have talked about curtailing. While the clampdown on legal migration is more contentious, Indian and US companies are seeking creative solutions, such as nearshoring employees in the same time zone, for example in Canada and Latin America. 

The growth of global capability centres inside India also makes it less necessary for Indians to be physically in the US. Finally, even if the H1B visa quota is reduced, Indians will remain key beneficiaries, given demand from the US IT sector.

China: Long-term uncertainty

There are nonetheless risks facing the India–US relationship over the longer term arising from a mismatch of expectations. Modi’s US visit comes amid a flurry of recent diplomatic activity between India and the West that highlights India’s market potential. The whole European Commission led by President Ursula Von der Leyen will visit India in late February and the UK and EU are engaged in ongoing free trade negotiations with India.

However, there is also an important strategic angle to the US relationship rooted in a push to promote India as a bulwark against China.

Many China ‘hawks’ in the Trump administration are India ‘doves’ – National Security Advisor Mike Waltz previously headed the India Caucus in the House of Representatives and Rubio backed deepening US–India defence cooperation as a senator. 

New Delhi is also trying to leverage the recent shock over China’s DeepSeek platform to promote its own AI credentials.

During a conversation between Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his American counterpart Pete Hegseth last week, both countries committed to concluding a 10-year defence cooperation framework aimed at improving defence technology collaboration and the interoperability of their militaries.

This ‘China factor’ is also evident in technology, which is a significant area of cooperation between India and the West and a key sphere of competition with China. The US, the EU and UK have all deepened engagement with India in this area in recent years. 

India’s large IT-educated workforce and digital ecosystem has made it a leader in such areas as chip design and digital public infrastructure. New Delhi is also trying to leverage the recent shock over China’s DeepSeek platform to promote its own AI credentials.

However, there is an underlying fallacy to the view of India as a viable alternative to China. India lacks China’s manufacturing capacity and remains heavily dependent on China for component and raw-material supply chains.

Despite their difficult relations, China is a leading trade partner for India and India maintains a heavy reliance on China in sectors ranging from pharmaceuticals to solar power. This undermines the notion of India as a beneficiary of the push to diversify supply-chains away from China.

Moreover, there are limits on how deeply India can become enmeshed in Western technology architecture given its relations with countries such as Russia and Iran. This will impose restrictions on technology transfers and joint production, as well as stringent end-user requirements.

These developments indicate some irrational exuberance in how the US and the West generally view India. Aside from India’s supply-chain dependence on China, New Delhi’s long-standing commitment to ‘strategic autonomy’ in its foreign policy means that it will remain apprehensive of any initiative that resembles a military alliance. This will create ambiguity over what role India would play in any US-China conflict over Taiwan, for example.

With Modi’s visit taking place so early in the Trump presidency and key positions not yet confirmed, including the US ambassador for India, the visit is primarily about reaffirming relations with the US, rather than addressing long-term fissures in the bilateral relationship.