Desi Talk

www.desitalk.com – that’s all you need to know 9 SPECIAL REPORT February 13, 2026 I n early September, shortly after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a chummy meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in China, he dispatched his national security adviser toWash- ington to help smooth over fraying ties. Ajit Doval came with a message for Sec- retary of State Marco Rubio: India wanted to put the acrimony between the two nations behind it and get back to negotiat- ing a trade deal, according to officials in New Delhi familiar with the meeting, who asked not to be identified because the discussions were private. 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 administra- tions 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. The US president 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 Sept. 16, Trump called Modi on his birthday and praised him for doing a “tre- mendous job.” By the end of the year, the two leaders had spoken four more times on the phone as they inched toward a deal to bring down the tariffs. Randhir Jaiswal, spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, denied that the Doval-Rubio meeting took place when asked about it at a regular briefing on Thursday. A spokesperson for the US State Department said that in keeping with standard diplomatic practice, it does not disclose the details of private discussions. On Monday, Trump announced he’d reached a trade agreement with Modi that would reduce tariffs on India’s goods to 18%, lower than most of its peers in Asia. A punitive 25% duty that the US leader had slapped on India for buying Russian oil was also scrapped. In turn, Trump said, India agreed to purchase $500 billion of US goods, switch to buying Venezuelan oil, and reduce tariffs on US imports to zero. Modi’s government hasn’t confirmed those details and neither side has pub- lished any documentation to codify the agreement. “The past year has been one where ne- gotiators, both in the US and India worked feverishly to get us to this point,” Nisha Biswal, partner at The Asia Group and former US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “It benefits both the US and India that you have an India that is finally really opening up on global trade.” Publicly, there had been no indication from either side that a deal was imminent. As recently as last week, US Trade Repre- sentative Jamieson Greer said India still had a long way to go to convinceWashing- ton it was halting Russia crude buys. On Monday, officials in New Delhi were taken by surprise when Trump posted about the deal on social media. Many senior bureaucrats in the foreign and commerce ministries, even those who had been directly involved in the trade negoti- ations, were oblivious that a call had been scheduled between the leaders that day. Some were unable to confirm key details related to the tariff announcement when contacted by reporters late in the day. Behind the scenes, though, New Delhi had been working to get relations gradu- ally back on track. Doval’s meeting with Rubio in September was a signal toWash- ington that it sees the US as a long-term strategic partner and couldn’t afford to allow ties to deteriorate further. The prevailing view in New Delhi was that India needed US capital, technology and military cooperation to deter China and meet Modi’s goals of making the South Asian nation a developed economy by 2047. Trump was just a blip over that time frame, officials in New Delhi said, and India needs to stay focused on doing what’s best over the long term. “New Delhi was never going to sever relations withWashington following last year’s downturn in bilateral relations,” said Chietigj Bajpaee, a senior research fellow for South Asia at Chatham House. “India-US relations remain ‘sticky’ given the plethora of institutionalized and people-to-people linkages between both countries.” “That being said,” he added, “the ir- rational exuberance that marked New Delhi’s earlier assessments of the bilateral relationship have faded.” Relations had spiraled downward ever since Trump claimed credit in May for resolving a four-day clash between India and neighboring Pakistan, a boast that Modi vehemently rejected. In a tense call between the two leaders in June, Modi declined Trump’s request to come to the White House, where the US president was hosting Pakistan’s army chief at the time. In October, Modi skipped a summit in Malaysia to avoid a possibly awkward meeting with Trump. The arrival of new US Ambassador Sergio Gor to New Delhi in December appeared to kick off more serious efforts to get relations back on an even keel. Gor, a former seniorWhite House official and longtime member of Trump’s inner circle who is also close to Rubio, has repeatedly underscored the importance of US-India ties. In his first public speech in his new role, Gor cast the tensions between the two countries as disagreements among “real friends,” which he said both sides were sure to resolve. He also announced India would be invited to join a US-led alliance, called Pax Silica, to strengthen supply chains. A further thaw in ties was evident dur- ing a meeting between Gor and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishan- kar last week, according to people familiar with the matter. Gor said in a social-media post that the two sides discussed “every- thing from defense, trade, critical miner- als, and working toward our common PHOTO:REUTERS/KEVIN LAMARQUE/FILE PHOTO PHOTO: .SUOTAKEKUMA/POOLVIA REUTERS/FILE PHOTO Modi Adopted Strong Line To Clinch US Trade Deal; Sent Message Of India’s Resilience Through Doval By Sudhi Ranjan Sen, Dan Strumpf and Shruti Srivastava U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepare to shake hands as they attend a joint press conference at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 13, 2025. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit 2025 at the Meijiang C onvention and Exhibition Centre in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. PHOTO:PRAKASH SINGH/BLOOMBERG Narendra Modi with the European Council’s Antonio Costa and the European Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen in New Delhi on Jan. 27. - Continued On Page 10 Breaking : India and the U.S. expect to sign a formal trade deal in March, after which New Delhi will lower tariffs on U.S. goods, Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday, giving the first official timeline for the deal’s adoption.” -REUTERS