US Vice President JD Vance will leave on a journey to India on April 21, with both nations making an effort to solidify their partnership with a view to a forthcoming bilateral trade deal. For four days, Vance will see Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi and pay a visit to relatives in Agra and Jaipur. This places Vance as the second senior Trump administration official to visit India, following DNI chief Tulsi Gabbard’s visit in the previous month.
Parallel to the visit by Vance, US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz will also be in India from April 21 to 23. The two leaders will both meet PM Modi on April 21, as the Prime Minister is slated to be away in Saudi Arabia from April 22 onwards.
The latest meeting of PM Modi with Vance was conducted on the margins of the AI Action Summit in Paris, where they first came into contact with one another. Modi celebrated the birthday of Vivek, son of Vance, during this meeting and presented him with a set of wooden railway toys, a folk art jigsaw puzzle, and a hand-made alphabet set. During the summit, Vance echoed Modi’s opinions that artificial intelligence enhances human productivity and not as a substitute for jobs.
Vance’s association with India is particularly notable, courtesy of his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who is from an Indian immigrant background from Andhra Pradesh. This has been the subject of intense discussion in India, especially when Vance announced his candidacy last year.
The two trips by Vance and Waltz come after Trump’s earlier announcement on tit-for-tat tariffs, which has now been shelved. Both nations are in talks on a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) with the target of increasing bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. In March 2025, a US delegation led by Assistant U.S.
Trade Representative Brendan Lynch travelled to India in order to finalize the framework for the BTA. Speaking at the Global Technology Summit, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar emphasized the need for the trade agreement, adding, “Within a month of a change in the administration, we actually have conceptually an agreement that we will do a bilateral trade agreement. We see a window here.”
Preparations are also underway for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s visit to India, aimed at advancing a new 10-year framework for the US-India Major Defense Partnership, announced during PM Modi’s recent visit to the White House.
A few of the initial contacts between India and the Trump administration included PM Modi’s telephonic conversations with Donald Trump following the latter’s election as president in November 2024, and Jaishankar’s subsequent visit in December to engage with both Biden personnel and members of the incoming Trump administration, including NSA nominee Mike Waltz.
