Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump said that he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi next week. PM Modi is scheduled to visit the US to attend a summit hosted by US President Joe Biden with leaders from Australia, India and Japan on September 21.
This comes after Trump said at a campaign event on Tuesday that India was a “very big abuser” of the US-India trade relationship. He, however, gave no indication on where he would meet PM Modi. Despite criticising India over the trade ties, Trump called PM Modi “fantastic”.
Trump and Modi have always enjoyed warm relations during the former’s tenure as the president. Modi held a huge rally for Trump when he visited India in 2020, also marking the opening of the world’s largest cricket stadium in Motera. Before that Trump and Modi had praised each other at the ‘Howdy Modi!’ rally in Texas in 2019, which was attended by more than 50,000 people.
INDIA-US REVIEW COOPERATION IN KEY AREAS
Meanwhile, India and the US carried out a review of strategic cooperation in various areas including defence, technology, clean energy and maritime domain awareness. The two sides undertook the review at a '2+2' inter-sessional meeting held in Delhi on Monday, according to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
Both sides took stock of the progress and developments in the bilateral agenda including strategic cooperation, defence, technology collaboration, space cooperation, resilient supply chain, clean energy, maritime domain awareness, development cooperation including trilateral cooperation and people to people ties, the MEA said.
The 2+2 intersessional laid the groundwork in the lead up to the next 2+2 ministerial dialogue to advance the India-US Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership, the MEA said in a late night statement.
(With agency inputs)