U.S. President Donald Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi talk in New Delhi in February 2020. © Reuters
NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, during which they are widely expected to discuss energy cooperation and trade.
The Indian leader is expected to hold talks with the U.S. president in the afternoon local time, when he will be one of the first national heads to meet Trump in his second term. The two leaders have developed warm relations.
“Now that the prime minister is going to be meeting the president … you can see some discussions on energy,” India’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told Nikkei Asia in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ll be very surprised if in any such high-level interaction between the heads of state and government [that] energy doesn’t figure.”
He added, “We are already buying $20 billion [worth] of energy from the United States. Our imports of energy from the U.S. in the last five years have gone up 13 times [which is] a big figure.”
India imports over 85% of its crude oil requirement. From April to November last year, the South Asian nation purchased $4.12 billion worth of petroleum crude from the U.S., according to data from the commerce ministry.
At the India-U.S. energy roundtable organized as part of the ongoing India Energy Week 2025 in New Delhi on Wednesday, the emphasis was placed on deeper cooperation in energy trade, technology exchange and investments in emerging energy solutions.
“With companies from both nations eager to capitalize on new opportunities, the partnership continues to evolve under the visionary leadership of both governments,” said a statement released by India’s energy department. “This collaboration is set to foster a robust, mutually beneficial energy future, ensuring economic prosperity, innovation, and sustainability for both nations.”
Asked about energy cooperation under the Trump administration, Puri told Nikkei, “We will see if the U.S. wants to bring more energy into the market and the U.S. also wants to export more, then the potential importers like India would obviously talk to them.”
Indian oil producers, including state-owned Indian Oil Corp. and Bharat Petroleum Corp., are also keen to buy more liquified natural gas from the U.S., especially in the wake of the Trump administration lifting a ban on export permits for new projects. Companies from both sides have been holding talks in this regard, the minister said.
Apart from energy, tariffs are expected to also be on the agenda. Trump had called India a “tariff king” and a “tariff abuser” in the past, and India has moved quickly to appease his second administration.
Just days before it accepted over 100 immigrants who had entered the U.S. illegally, India vowed to slash tariffs on imports of textiles and motorcycles in its federal budget on Feb. 1. The latter was aimed at easing the import of premium motorcycles from U.S. companies like Indian Motorcycle and Harley Davidson, which compete with Japan’s Honda and homegrown Royal Enfield.
In the fiscal year ended March 2024, bilateral trade between India and the U.S. stood at $118.2 billion, according to data from the Indian ministry of commerce and industry. The U.S. was “one of the few countries with which India had a trade surplus,” according to a trust run by the ministry. The surplus stood at $36.8 billion, trust data showed.
India’s biggest imports from the U.S. were mineral fuels and oils, at a value of $1.18 billion in the fiscal year, followed by nuclear reactors and boilers, with imports worth $330 million. India’s biggest exports to the U.S. were engineering goods and electronic goods.
source : asia.nikkei