On the eve of US Trade Representative Jameson Greer’s visit to India next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged US President Donald Trump for an early signing of a bilateral trade deal at the Evian meeting on Wednesday evening. Both sides agreed that negotiations should be completed soon so that the trade deal is signed and India-US ties move to the next level.
PM Modi and Donald Trump held talks on a wide-ranging topics on Wednesday.
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While critics of PM Modi and his foreign policy assumed that India-US bilateral ties would move into management mode due to mercurial President Trump, the meeting turned out to be a full endorsement of India and PM Modi by the US President. During the press conference after the bilateral meeting, President Trump made it amply clear that he was all out for India-US ties and dished out all accolades and respect for PM Modi. He said till PM Modi was around, India had a friend in the White House and that the US would come to India’s aid if it was attacked by any third country.
The statement that the US would come to India’s defence does not mean much substantively in the sense that the Modi government does not need any support to tackle its adversaries but at the same time it was a message to India’s neighbors like Pakistan. In many ways, it was a clear message to all that President Trump had a close personal friend in PM Modi and both the countries were on the same page on global issues. While admitting that India was a global power, President Donald Trump said it was for New Delhi to decide whether it wanted to play any role in the Middle-East peace deal. PM Modi had a meeting with Ukranian President V Zelensky after the talks with President Trump.
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PM Modi on his part praised President Trump for concluding MoU with Iran and the decision to open Strait of Hormuz for free and open navigation. While raising the issue of safety of seafarers with President Trump, PM Modi also expressed his satisfaction on the 60 day ceasefire after the conclusion of MoU with Iran.
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PM Modi on his part praised President Trump for concluding MoU with Iran and the decision to open Strait of Hormuz for free and open navigation. While raising the issue of safety of seafarers with President Trump, PM Modi also expressed his satisfaction on the 60 day ceasefire after the conclusion of MoU with Iran.
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Even though not many substantive issues were discussed between the two leaders as the dialogue turned goody-goody from both sides, the Modi-Trump meeting will definitely unlock decisions that were put on hold due to pin-pricks from Washington over trade tariffs, Russian oil purchases by India and alleged Trump intervention in India-Pakistan ceasefire after Op Sindoor in May 2025.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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