Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is meet­ing Thurs­day with In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di, who has heaped praise on him and is hop­ing to avoid tar­iffs that the new ad­min­is­tra­tion has slapped on oth­er coun­tries in its open­ing weeks.

Mo­di is a na­tion­al­ist and has talked up his warm re­la­tion­ship with Trump dur­ing his first term while cheer­ing his win­ning back the White House. The In­di­an leader is look­ing to im­prove re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton and the West over­all, which have been frosty late­ly af­ter Mo­di re­fused to con­demn Rus­sia for its war on Ukraine.

The trip comes af­ter Mo­di’s rul­ing Hin­du na­tion­al­ist par­ty’s vic­to­ry dur­ing a high-stakes state leg­is­la­ture elec­tion last week­end in In­dia’s fed­er­al ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing New Del­hi. The prime min­is­ter said be­fore leav­ing for Wash­ing­ton that the vis­it was a chance to “deep­en our part­ner­ship” in key ar­eas such as tech­nol­o­gy, trade, de­fence and en­er­gy.

The White House vis­it isn’t like­ly to be all smiles, though.

Trump has al­ready im­posed tar­iffs on Chi­na and says more are com­ing against the Eu­ro­pean Union, while threat­en­ing sim­i­lar against Cana­da and Mex­i­co and ex­pand­ing tar­iffs on steel and alu­mini­um he ini­tial­ly im­posed dur­ing his first term.

Trump has re­peat­ed­ly dubbed In­dia a “tar­iff king.” In re­sponse, New Del­hi has shown a will­ing­ness to buy more Amer­i­can oil while low­er­ing its own tar­iffs on U.S. goods, in­clud­ing on some Harley-David­son mo­tor­cy­cles, from 50% to 40%.

Al­so, In­dia in 2023 dropped re­tal­ia­to­ry tar­iffs on U.S. al­monds, ap­ples, chick­peas, lentils and wal­nuts.

Then there’s a re­cent deal al­low­ing U.S.-based Gen­er­al Elec­tric to part­ner with In­dia-based Hin­dus­tan Aero­nau­tics to pro­duce jet en­gines for In­di­an air­craft in In­dia, and the sale of U.S.-made armed MQ-9B Sea­Guardian drones.

Still, Trump has de­cried U.S. trade deficits around the world and said he’ll work to shrink them, in­clud­ing dur­ing his meet­ings at the White House last week with Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Shigeru Ishi­ba.

The U.S. is In­dia’s largest trade part­ner, but the two coun­tries have a trade deficit of $50 bil­lion in In­dia’s favour.

The In­do-U.S. goods and ser­vices trade to­talled around $190.1 bil­lion in 2023. Ac­cord­ing to In­dia’s Ex­ter­nal Af­fairs Min­istry, the U.S. ex­ports to In­dia were worth near­ly $70 bil­lion and im­ports $120 bil­lion.

An­oth­er top­ic like­ly to be dis­cussed is im­mi­gra­tion. Mo­di can point to In­dia’s hav­ing ac­cept­ed the re­turn of 104 mi­grants brought back on a U.S. mil­i­tary plane — the first such flight to the coun­try as part of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s crack­down on im­mi­gra­tion and the U.S.-Mex­i­co bor­der.

For the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, mean­while, In­dia is seen as in­te­gral to the U.S. strat­e­gy of con­tain­ing Chi­na in the In­do-Pa­cif­ic. Mo­di’s coun­try is host­ing a sum­mit of a group of coun­tries known as the Quad — made up of the U.S., In­dia, Japan and Aus­tralia — lat­er this year. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by WILL WEIS­SERT | As­so­ci­at­ed Press