INDIA: US President Donald Trump will open the world’s biggest cricket stadium and watch the sun set at the famed Taj Mahal during a lightning visit to India on Monday.
Trump’s blossoming bromance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that will be on show again belies prickly relations, particularly over commerce, with both men ramping up protectionist measures.
Experts say this has hurt US efforts to make India a strategic counterweight to China, while Trump’s mediation offer in the long-running Kashmir dispute with Pakistan has annoyed New Delhi.
“We’re not treated very well by India, but I happen to like Prime Minister Modi a lot,” Trump, 73, said before his maiden official visit to the nation of 1.3 billion with First Lady Melania, daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The US President arrives in the western state of Gujarat where Modi’s record while chief minister as a reformer catapulted him to the national stage in 2014.
Construction workers have been rushing to complete the Sardar Patel Stadium.
It will be rammed with around 100,000 people for an event dubbed “Namaste Trump”, payback for a “Howdy, Modi” rally in Houston last year in front of some of America’s vast Indian diaspora.
The Trumps will then fly to the Taj Mahal, the white marble “jewel of Muslim art” according to UNESCO, but afterwards it will be down to business in New Delhi on Tuesday.
Reports suggest Trump and Modi may agree a modest trade pact covering items including imports of Harley-Davidson motorcycles and US dairy products such as pizza cheese, as well as a number of defence and other deals.
But this will fall short of the comprehensive agreement the world’s largest economy and the planet’s biggest democracy have been seeking for years.
Tanvi Madan from the Brookings Institution said the lack of progress on trade was the “big missing deliverable”, forcing both sides to focus more on the “great optics” of the visit.
“We’re doing a very big trade deal with India,” Trump said before the visit but conceded it may not be done before US elections in November. This was echoed on Thursday by India’s foreign ministry which said it did not want to “rush into a deal”.
Trump and Modi may ink a $2.4-billion deal for US helicopters, but overall when it comes to arms, Russia remains India’s biggest supplier. - AFP
In this photo taken on February 22, 2020, artist Sudarsan Pattnaik (L) bends near his sand sculpture representing US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania along with a message ‘Welcome to India’ written below the Taj Mahal, on Puri beach in India’s eastern state of Odisha. - AFP
