Narendra Modi leaves for Portugal today, will meet Donald Trump in the US tomorrow
The prime minister is expected to discuss his matters related to trade and terrorism.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will leave for Portugal on Saturday as part of a trip that also includes stop in the United States and the Netherlands. While in the US, Modi will meet President Donald Trump for the first time since he was elected in November 2016.
In Lisbon, Modi will meet Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa, who had visited India in January. Modi said on Facebook that the two would build on their discussions on various “joint initiatives” and concerns including “economic cooperation, science and technology, space collaboration and people-to-people ties”. In the Netherlands, Modi said he would celebrate 70 years of Indo-Dutch diplomatic relations by meeting Prime Minister Mark Rutte as well as King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima.
However, it is Modi’s trip to the US on Sunday that has political commentators watching keenly. In another Facebook post, Modi said he was going to Washington DC on Trump’s invitation after having spoken to him several times on the phone. During these conversations, Modi said, he had “touched upon our common intent to take forward our productive all round engagement for the mutual benefit of our people”.
Bilateral ties between India and the US have faced some challenges since Trump came to power. Concerns have risen that H1-B work visas will become harder to come by – and Indians are their biggest recipients. With Trump and his administration moving to tighten visa norms, Indian IT companies that sends thousands of workers to the US have started changing their strategy there, leaving many Indian engineers worried about their job security.
There have also been a number of hate crimes directed at Indians by confused xenophobes who have peddled white supremacist rhetoric while sometimes mistaking South Asians for West Asians. Most recently, Trump and his Vice President Mike Pence have used India as a justification for pulling out of the Paris climate change accord saying New Delhi is being given a “free pass” while the US is being unfairly forced to pay up for being the world’s biggest emitter.