Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is expected to meet President Trump at the Group of 7 summit on Wednesday, just a week after U.S. attacks on commercial ships left three Indian sailors dead, further straining ties between the countries.
Mr. Modi may be seeking to stabilize ties, but his task is tough: Any grievances he lodges will be from a country weakened by the Iran war to one that started the conflict and has appeared indifferent to its fallout on India. Already struggling to replace oil supplies after Mr. Trump slapped a punitive tariff on India in August for buying Russian oil, India suffered even more restrictions to its supply of crude from the Gulf region, bringing the oil-importing country to the edge of a fuel crisis. A trade deal has remained elusive.
Hopes of recalibrating ties were struck a blow with the deaths of the sailors in the Gulf of Oman.
The anticipated meeting on Wednesday, reported widely in the Indian media, will be the first face-to-face interaction between the leaders since February 2025, when Mr. Modi traveled to Washington, to congratulate Mr. Trump at the start of his second term. Then, there was a mutual display of bonhomie.
In the 16 months since, India has found its proximate ties to the United States upended by an unpredictable and sometimes bellicose Mr. Trump, and his administration’s determination to open India’s markets and enforce immigration policies that disproportionately affect Indian students and workers in the United States. The fusillade of actions detrimental to India’s interests have hurt its economy, wounded its pride and cast doubt on the value of the personal chemistry between the leaders.
“There is reasonable worry that the convergence between Delhi and Washington of the past 25 years has been through a period of drift and may potentially move toward divergence,” said Atul Keshap, president of the U.S.-India Business Council and a former chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in India. Both governments should focus on working to strengthen common interests, such as the digital economy and nuclear energy, rather than delay a final trade deal because of endless negotiations, he added.
India has been stubborn in negotiating a new trade deal with the United States after Mr. Trump slapped a bevy of tariffs on countries last year, frustrating U.S. officials with long drawn-out discussions. But recent agreements such as a critical minerals deal signed during Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent visit to India, show some efforts to rebuild ties.
Mr. Trump’s insistence that he mediated a cease-fire between India and Pakistan after the two enemies fought a four-day conflict in May 2025, and Mr. Modi’s repeated refusal to acknowledge it — or nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize — has also created friction.
Analysts also said it might behoove India to swallow its pride and be more flexible, mainly because it doesn’t yet have the kind of leverage that China or the United States have to reshape the global economy.
“The relationship with the United States is the most important relationship India has,” said Aparna Pande, a South Asia expert and senior fellow at Hudson Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Last week, U.S. forces struck three commercial tankers in the Gulf of Oman with missiles, killing three Indian seafarers while dozens more were rescued. The United States said the tankers had violated its naval blockade of Iran.
The attacks set off a firestorm in India, where people criticized U.S. forces for endangering the lives of the other Indian seafarers aboard the tankers. The Indian government said it lodged “a strong protest” with a top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Delhi, but opposition parties have accused it of not doing enough.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of both the Congress Party and the opposition in the Parliament’s lower house, attacked Mr. Modi for his silence, calling him an “obedient servant” of Mr. Trump.
Despite the souring relations on trade and geopolitics, the performative theater of the two men — both strongman-style leaders — remains on social media. Last week, Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. Modi on becoming India’s longest-serving prime minister. “And a Great One he is!” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Mr. Modi has often reciprocated, but relations on the back end have been tense. At the G7 summit held in Canada last June, Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump spoke on the phone because the latter left early and declined an invitation by Mr. Trump to return. India is not a member of the G7, but among the countries invited to join.
India’s foreign policy had begun to center on the idea that the United States considered it an important ally, and it expected that things would remain “in self-drive mode” when Mr. Trump returned to power, Ms. Pande said.
But the setbacks of the past year-and-a-half have sent India back into its defensive crouch of a so-called strategic autonomy, a term that implies pursuing a self-interested agenda by maintaining relations with all.
In recent months, India has been on a deal-making spree, signing bilateral agreements, creating strategic partnerships and deepening ties with countries ranging from France to Slovakia. An agreement with the European Union was seen as a hallmark of this approach. And India even reopened lines of communication with China, thawing relations that had been frozen since a 2020 border skirmish.
Analysts do not expect much beyond optics from the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi on the sidelines of the G7, but to not have a meeting would signal worse. The real work of resetting and strengthening ties has to be done behind the scenes, Mr. Keshap said. “It’s important that our two democracies remain on track.”
