BBC News
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has hailed a “mega partnership” between the US and India, as he and US leader Donald Trump wrapped up a meeting in which they announced a deal for Delhi to import more US oil and gas in an effort to shrink the trade deficit between both countries.
Modi’s two-day visit comes as Trump recently ordered that all the US’ trading partners – including India – should face sweeping reciprocal tariffs.
And while both men praised each other’s leadership, Trump criticised India for having some of the highest trade tariffs in the world, calling them a “big problem”.
The Indian leader, seeking to soften impending trade barriers, said he was open to reducing tariffs on US goods, repatriating undocumented Indian nationals and buying military fighter jets from the US.
At a joint news conference, Modi made several references to Trump’s “make America great again” slogan, including his own spin to it: “It’s Make India Great Again – Miga,” Modi said.
“Maga plus Miga…[is a] Mega partnership for prosperity”.
Trump also added that India would be “purchasing a lot of our oil and gas” in an effort to close the trade deficit between both countries.
“They need it. And we have it,” Trump said.
With India already being reliant on imported oil, which it sources from multiple countries, the energy deal with the US “presents a relatively low hanging fruit for both parties”, Radhika Rao, a senior economist at Singapore’s DBS bank told the BBC.
“The US is the largest export market for India’s goods and services, which underscores the administration’s willingness to pre-emptively smoothen trade relations and offer concessions to narrow the bilateral trade deficit that the US runs with India,” she said.
However, “India’s challenge will be to balance its own trade deficit because US oil and gas might be more expensive due to a stronger dollar,” Amitendu Palit, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies said.
“Reciprocal tariffs are likely to follow on India too at some stage. Hopefully for India, they won’t turn out to be larger than expected,” said Dr Palit.
Trump also added that the US would increase sales of military hardware to India by millions of dollars, eventually supplying Delhi with F-35 fighter jets.
The two also spoke about immigration – another pain point in bilateral relations – with Trump announcing that the US would extradite a man who allegedly plotted 2008 Mumbai terror attack to “face justice in India”.
Modi thanked Trump for allowing the extradition and vowed to accept repatriations of Indian nationals illegally living in the US.
Last week, US deported on a military plane 104 Indians accused of being illegal immigrants, with a video showing deportees in shackles. A second flight is expected to land in India on Saturday.
Indians are one of the largest populations of unauthorised immigrants in the US. They also hold the majority of H-1B visas – a programme that Trump had temporarily banned during his first term and is now coming under fresh scrutiny.
Shortly before his meeting with Modi, Trump had ordered his advisers to calculate broad new tariffs on US trading partners around the globe, warning they could start coming into effect by 1 April.
He acknowledged the risks of his tariff policy but argued the policy would boost American manufacturing and the country would be “flooded with jobs”.
Trump told reporters that “our allies are worse than our enemies”, when it comes to import taxes.
“We had a very unfair system to us,” the Republican president said before meeting Modi. “Everybody took advantage of the United States.”
The White House also issued a news release that fired a trade shot across the bows of India and other countries.
The document noted that the average US tariff on agricultural goods was 5% for countries to which Washington had granted most favoured nation (MFN) status.
“But India’s average applied MFN tariff is 39%,” the White House fact sheet said.
“India also charges a 100% tariff on US motorcycles, while we only charge a 2.4% tariff on Indian motorcycles.”
Trump has already placed an additional 10% tariff on imports from China, citing its production of fentanyl, a deadly opioid that has stoked a US overdose epidemic.
He has also readied tariffs on Canada and Mexico, America’s two largest trading partners, that could take effect in March after being suspended for 30 days.
Earlier this week, he removed exemptions from his 2018 steel and aluminium tariffs.
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