The road to India-US trade deal

DOVAL’S DASH TO WASHINGTON & GOR’S ARRIVAL IN NEW DELHI HELPED BRING TIES BACK ON TRACK

- SUDHI RANJAN SEN, DAN STRUMPF & SHRUTI SRIVASTAVA

IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, shortly after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a chummy meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China, he dispatched his national security adviser to Washington to help smooth over fraying ties.

Ajit Doval came with a message for Secretary of State Marco Rubio: India wanted to put the acrimony between the two nations behind it and get back to negotiating a trade deal, according to officials in New Delhi familiar with the meeting.

Doval told Rubio that India wouldn’t be bullied by US President Donald Trump and his top aides, the people said, and would be willing to wait out his term, having faced other hostile US administrations in the past. But New Delhi wanted Trump and his aides to dial down their public criticism of India so they could get relations back on track, Doval said in the meeting.

At the time, India was smarting from Trump’s insults and the 50% tariffs he’d slapped on its goods in August. Trump had called India a “dead” economy with high tariffs and that it was funding Putin’s war in Ukraine by buying Russian oil.

It wasn't long after Doval’s meeting, which was previously unreported, that the first signs of an ease in tensions emerged. On September 16, Trump called Modi on his birthday and praised him for doing a “tremendous job.’ By the end of the year, the two leaders had spoken four more times on the phone as they inched towards a deal to bring down the tariffs.

India’s Ministry of External Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Office didn’t respond to emails seeking further information. A spokesperson for the US State Department said that in keeping with standard diplomatic practice, it does not disclose the details of private discussions.