PM Modi and President Trump take first steps to patch up

PM on Saturday reciprocated to Trump’s statement that he will always ‘be friends with Modi’ and there was nothing to worry about India-US special relationship

Updated on: Sep 6, 2025, 16:55:30 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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With both US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirming their personal friendship and strength of bilateral ties, India and US have taken first steps to patch up the relationship which had turned sour over trade deal and Russian oil.

In this June 27, 2017 file image Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Donald Trump exchange greetings at a joint press conference in Washington (PTI)

With PM Modi reciprocating US President Trump’s statement that he will always ‘be friends with Modi’ and there was nothing to worry about India-US special relationship, it is now for the officials to get together and hammer out a final trade deal which is a win-win for both the countries.

After the two leaders engaged each other, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar also made it clear that PM Modi attaches a lot of importance to ties with US.

Replying to a question, President Trump made it clear that he did not think that US had lost India to China. He also stated: “ I get along with Modi as you know, he was here a couple of months ago, we went to Rose Garden and did a press conference.”

With the two leaders making it amply clear that they were all for closer bilateral ties, the next step perhaps would be the acrimonious noise coming from Washington against India will now either stop or soften up. There is also a strong possibility that the two leaders may pick up the phone to talk to each other and give directions to senior officials in a bid to cement ties.

Coming out in the open after his telephonic conversation with President Trump on June 17, PM Modi used X and stated: “ Deeply appreciate and fully reciprocate President Trump’s sentiments and positive assessment of our ties. India and the US have a very positive and forward looking Comprehgensive and Global Strategic Partnership.”

PM Modi’s statement on X reflects the sentiments on Raisina Hill as New Delhi was patiently waiting for noise from Washington to die down and for President Trump to reconsider the US position as India was in no way getting close to China. India was just normalizing ties with China while continuing to engage Russia.

The mood on Raisina Hill is that all efforts may be made to conclude a trade deal with US after making the latter understand that the bilateral ties between two natural allies are for global good.

India was positive that relations would turn for the better when one of India top national security planner visited US last month and met all the top officials of US intelligence and enforcement agencies. The message from US was that disagreement on trade was a just a hiccup and the bilateral relations will go on as usual.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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