PM likely to visit US from Feb 12

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to visit the United States on February 12-14 for a bilateral meeting with US President Donald Trump.

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The meeting is happening in the backdrop of the newly-elected US President having issued threats of imposing tariffs, deporting Indians staying illegally in the US and has questioned the BRICS-bloc.

Modi is likely to reach the US from France, where he is scheduled to attend the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, in Paris on February 10 and February 11. He will co-chair the AI Action Summit with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Sources said the possible dates of Modi’s visit to the US have been shared with Washington DC. India would prefer that Prime Minister goes to the US after his visit to France.

Since Modi would be in Paris, he would have anyway covered more than half the distance between New Delhi and Washington DC. The other window for Modi to travel to United States is in the third week of February. However, in all likelihood, the dates of February 12-14 could be finalised, sources said.

Modi and Trump had spoken over the phone on Monday. The White House, in a statement, had said “The leaders discussed plans for Prime Minister Modi to visit the White House”.

Modi’s last bilateral meet with a US President was in September last year, when he met Joe Biden at Wilmington, Delaware, on the sidelines of the Quad summit.

Meanwhile, the US is looking re-define the US-India relationship on bilateral trade and defence industrial partnership. Trump had told Modi over phone that he was seeking a “fair bilateral trading relationship”.

India’s impositions of tariffs on several US-made items had angered Trump during his last term between 2017 and 2021. In his second term, he has threatened imposition of tariffs on India, China and Brazil. Trump is also asking India to increase its procurement of American-made security equipment.

From the Indian perspective, defence ties have been badly hit, with US company General Electric delaying the contracted supplies of the its jet engines — named the F404 — and planned to be used for the Tejas Mark1A jets. Consequently, the deliveries of the jet — being made by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited — have been delayed.

Both India and the US are also partners with Japan and Australia in the ‘Quad’. Ten days ago, in a veiled message to China, on its attempts to coerce its way through maritime territorial disputes, the foreign ministers of the Quad countries, ‘strongly opposed’ attempts to change any status quo.

The Quad Foreign Ministers met at Washington DC on January 21, a day after Donald Trump took over as the US President.