Donald Trump speaks with reporter
Credit: Reuters File Photo
New Delhi: Donald Trump may visit India within a few months after returning to the White House and taking over as the 47th president of the United States.
Trump, who will succeed Joe Biden on January 20 next year, may visit India to attend the fifth summit of the Quad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host the summit of the four-nation coalition, which comprises Australia, Japan, India, and the United States in 2025.
Though the 4th Quad summit was expected to be held in India this year itself, Modi accepted a request from Biden to let him host it in the US. The summit was held in Delaware, US, on September 21, with Biden hosting Modi, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and then Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. It was agreed that the fifth summit of the coalition would be hosted by Modi in India in 2025.
Trump, along with his wife Melania Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump, had visited Ahmedabad and New Delhi in February 2020 – just a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world and about a year before the end of his first term. If he attends the 5th Quad summit to be hosted by Modi in 2025, the 78-year-old Republican would be the second US president after Barack Obama to visit India twice. Obama had visited New Delhi in 2010 and 2015, the second time as the chief guest at the Republic Day ceremony.
Quad had been conceived in 2004 but fizzled out soon after its formal launch in 2007. The bloc was revived in 2017 by India, Japan, Australia, and the US to build a bulwark of democratic nations to counter the hegemonic aspirations of China in the Indo-Pacific region.
The Quad was revived during Trump’s first term in the White House. His successor Biden elevated it to the level of leadership with a virtual summit in March 2021, followed by the first in-person summit in Washington DC a few months later.
While uncertainty looms large over the US policy on China during the Trump 2.0 era, New Delhi, Canberra, and Tokyo would look forward to his participation at the 5th Quad summit in India to assess his administration’s commitment to the free and open Indo-Pacific.
Biden visited New Delhi to attend the G20 summit hosted by Modi in September 2023. He was expected to visit again in January 2024 to attend the Republic Day ceremony as the chief guest. But he turned down the invitation for the same amid strains in ties between New Delhi and Washington DC over the US allegation about the involvement of an official of the Government of India in a plot to kill a Khalistani Sikh extremist in New York.