Trump administration will further cement ties with India: Sources

External affairs minister S Jaishankar attended the Trump inauguration ceremony as special envoy of Prime Minister Modi.

Updated on: Jan 22, 2025, 20:00:36 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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India has started on the front foot in bilateral ties with the United States, with external affairs minister S Jaishankar attending President Donald Trump's inauguration as a special envoy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and then meeting top officials of the new administration.

Jaishankar was sent as a special envoy as PM Modi does not attend inaugurals.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar poses for a group picture with United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong and Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya during Quad Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, in Washington DC on Tuesday. (ANI Photo) (Dr. S. Jaishankar-X)

After being accorded top protocol at President Trump's inauguration ceremony, EAM Jaishankar met National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and then attended QUAD meeting with newly appointed secretary of state Marco Rubio, Australian foreign minister Penny Wong and Japanese foreign minister Iwaya Takeshi.

This was immediately followed by a bilateral meeting between Jaishankar and Marco Rubio. The importance of India in the Trump calculus was indicated by the fact that first multilateral meeting of Marco Rubio was the QUAD meeting and the first bilateral meeting of secretary Rubio was with India.

Trump administration decides to further cement ties with India

According to top sources, the Trump administration has decided to further cement ties with India while giving out a clear cut message in the Indo-Pacific through QUAD meeting, and through the bilateral meeting with minister Jaishankar.

It is learnt that the Trump administration will carry forward the India-US bilateral momentum achieved during the previous administration, and is all set to forge big steps in technology, defence and security, trade and commerce, and economic ties.

While the QUAD meeting was a review of the past steps taken by the grouping, Secretary Rubio reminded his three counterparts that it was President Trump who had started the QUAD foreign ministers dialogue in 2017.

Secretary Rubio clearly indicated that President Trump has all intentions to move forward on QUAD to ensure freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific, alternate resilient global supply chains, and fast response to humanitarian and natural disasters in the region.

According to sources, minister Jaishankar's interaction with his US counterparts has turned out to be very positive, with both the countries committed to move forward on the basis of mutual interest and mutual security.

External affairs minister Jaishankar will be holding a press conference later today in Washington DC before he departs for India, after a very successful trip.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
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.Read More

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