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Khushboo Razdan

New Delhi has declined to confirm Donald Trump’s claim that Narendra Modi will meet with him when the Indian prime minister spends three days in the US starting this weekend.
“There are many meetings with the prime minister right now which we are trying to fix,” Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Thursday, without ruling out a one-on-one discussion.
“I will not be able to tell you about any specific meeting, whether the meeting has been fixed or not,” he added, noting that Modi would have “engagement with a host of business and industry leaders, amongst others”.
During a rally in Michigan on Tuesday, Trump – the former US president who is running again for the office – criticised India as “a very big abuser” in trade but described Modi as a “fantastic man”.
“He happens to be coming to meet me next week,” Trump said.
Modi will be in the US from Saturday through Monday, to attend US President Joe Biden’s convening of the leaders of the Quad security group, along with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. The session is to take place in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday.
Modi is also set to follow that on Sunday with an address to an Indian gathering in New York City.

According to Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Programme at the Wilson Centre think tank in Washington, should Modi actually meet with Trump, the timing of the visit would not only be awkward but also controversial because the “election is indeed less than two months away”.
Describing Trump’s announcement as an “extraordinary development”, he noted that “it’s a risk for Modi to do this meeting”.
For one thing, Kugelman said, there is nothing to suggest Modi plans to meet with Vice-President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, whose mother was Indian.
“If he were to meet with Trump, and there were no meetings with Kamala Harris – regardless of what his motivations are for holding that meeting with Trump – there would be strong perceptions that he does have a preference,” Kugelman said.
“The optics of Modi meeting Biden, meeting Trump, not meeting Harris could be problematic on a variety of levels,” he added.
Mira Rapp-Hooper, the top White House adviser on Indo-Pacific policy, refused to comment on Thursday on the possibility of Modi meeting both Biden and Trump, or Harris, during his visit.
But Lisa Curtis of the Centre for a New American Security said that if Modi met with Trump it would not be surprising.
“They had a very close relationship when Trump was in power, and there were a lot of successes on the US-India relationship,” Curtis recalled.
Trump hosted a reception in 2019 for Modi in Texas which drew an estimated 50,000. The following year, Modi welcomed Trump in his home state of Gujarat for an event which attracted an audience of around 120,000.
“I think there was a lot of good chemistry between these two leaders, and India would be relatively comfortable with the potential for a future Trump administration,” Curtis said.
Kugelman said he doubted India had a clear preference for either Trump or Harris, recalling the trade tensions during the Trump administration.
In 2018, Trump increased duties on 14 per cent of India’s exports to the US. In response, New Delhi imposed new tariffs on about 6 per cent of US exports to India.
“It’s true that there might be a perception in New Delhi that Trump would be much less likely than Harris to elevate a focus on human rights and other internal happenings inside India,” Kugelman said.
“But I’m not sure it would be accurate to say that from India’s perspective, Trump or Harris would be a clear advantage.”
During his current run for the White House, Trump has repeatedly accused India of “stealing” American business and vowed to punish New Delhi.
Farwa Aamer of Asia Society, a New York think tank, said that while a Harris presidency would “most likely build on the Biden-Harris administration approach toward India”, under a Trump rule “there might be greater pressures for burden-sharing on India and concerns about potential tariffs”.
If Modi does meet with Trump, he will join a list of foreign leaders who have met with the Republican nominee this year.
Since the spring, Trump has hosted British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. He has also met with Polish President Andrzej Duda in New York.
Additional reporting by Robert Delaney


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India

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and then-US President Donald Trump in Houston, Texas, in 2019. Trump has said he will be meeting with Modi next week, but the Indian foreign ministry declined to confirm that on Thursday. Photo: AP 

(From left) Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Modi announcing a Quad Fellowship scholarship programme in 2022. Biden will host a meeting of the Quad leaders on Saturday in Wilmington, Delaware. Photo: AFP 

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(From left): Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Narendra Modi in 2022. Photo: AFP

Quad leaders, hosted by US President Joe Biden, meet at the White House in 2021. Photo: Bloomberg

Foreign policy takes a back seat in unconventional Harris-Trump US presidential race

Vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a presidential debate with Donald Trump at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on September 10. Photo: AFP/Getty Images/TNS

Former US president Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris shake hands before their debate in Philadelphia on September 10. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US president Donald Trump shake hands outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in November 2017. Photo: Tass/Abaca Press/TNS

US President Joe Biden ended his bid for re-election on July 21 and quickly endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris. Photo: AP

Rebecca Lissner is serving as Kamala Harris’s deputy national security adviser. Photo: Handout 

Robert Lighthizer served as US trade representative during the Trump administration. Photo: UPI/Bloomberg

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The US and Australia are two of the four Quad members, with Japan and India being the other two. File photo: via AP

An aerial view of a Philippine fishing boat (bottom R) anchored near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea in 2023. Photo: AFP

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Republican presidential nominee said at Tuesday rally that Narendra Modi would visit him while in US for a session of Quad security group


Republican presidential nominee said at Tuesday rally that Narendra Modi would visit him while in US for a session of Quad security group.
