The 52nd summit of the Group of Seven (G7) in Évian (France) is consequential for the world and also for India. The event has come at a time when the world, turned upside down by the Trump tornado, is trying to regain its footing. And within this storm is India’s own field of turbulence with the US. That Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first meeting with US President Donald Trump since February 2025 came with a firm handshake — rather than the trademark hug — said it all.
India was an outreach partner of G7 from 2003 to 2009. Later, it was again invited by France in 2019 and has since been a consistent invitee. The French connection has been special; this time round, it has seen PM Modi being given a position of prominence next to Trump and the host President Emmanuel Macron at the outreach meeting.
The G7 has a large agenda of its own — geopolitical conflicts and security, economic imbalances and supply chain disruptions, energy transition and climate change, global health and development, trade, global stability, energy issues, AI and cybersecurity. With Trump in the picture, they are hardly a politically united grouping, but the summit is an invaluable forum for world leaders, even though China and Russia are missing.
But the Indian focus has been on the Trump-Modi meeting after a 16-month period that has seen the India-US relationship reach a nadir of sorts. Relations between the two countries soured following Trump’s repeated claims that he had helped broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May 2025 following the four-day war. Thereafter, two tranches of tariffs, one on account of India buying Russian oil, made India among the most tariffed countries.
For these reasons, Modi has been avoiding a direct meeting with Trump. He refused the US President’s invitation to visit Washington DC following the 2025 G7 summit in Canada. He skipped the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur. He also avoided the Gaza Peace Summit in Sharm El-Sheikh last October, hosted by Trump and Egyptian President Fattah El-Sisi.
Tuesday’s meeting between the two leaders was a brief encounter followed by Modi’s outreach speech that Trump heard attentively sitting next to him. The two leaders had a more substantive bilateral meeting on Wednesday evening.
The PM’s remarks highlighted the interconnections in a world where energy, food, health, cyber and economic security are intertwined. He said the Global South sought equal partnerships based on trust rather than a traditional donor-recipient mindset and called for lasting solutions to the regional conflicts through dialogue, diplomacy and international cooperation.
But Modi’s main message for Trump was contained in his remarks on the impact of disruptions to maritime trade through the Strait of Hormuz on the global economy. With an eye on his domestic audience, he also referred to the loss of Indian lives there. He said that the protection of seafarers was a collective responsibility since they connected nations through global trade. Modi underscored his subliminal message to Trump by declaring that “mutual trust is the most important strategic asset today.”
Trump must have heard what the Prime Minister had to say, but it’s unlikely that it registered with him that “trust” somehow related to him and that most Indians blame trigger-happy Americans for the death of three seafarers.
As per reports, the issue of seafarers’ safety was raised at the Trump-Modi meeting. With a touch of generosity, the PM claimed that India-US relations had “gained new momentum, new energy”.
His most important task was to get Trump to send a clear and favourable signal that both leaders were committed to sealing the first tranche of their trade deal next week. On June 23-24, American negotiators led by US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will meet their Indian counterparts, led by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, to resolve the remaining sticky issues, including those related to tariffs on agriculture, dairy and increased US energy exports to India.
This will be the first tranche of their trade agreement that will set the stage for their economic relationship being firmed up through a Bilateral Trade Agreement. It is important for India to push back now against the protectionist Section 301 proceedings that have suddenly come up and could add 12.5% tariff to Indian goods.
The G7 Summit and the high-powered meetings come at a time when the India-US relationship is in need of a reset. The bruises from the past 16 months — Trump’s India-Pak ceasefire grandstanding, the tariff escalation, the deaths of Indian seafarers in American strikes — will not heal easily. But both sides have structural incentives to move forward. Washington needs a credible democratic partner in the Indo-Pacific as it manages its rivalry with China, and New Delhi needs American technology, capital and strategic cover as it navigates an increasingly contested neighbourhood.
The Modi-Trump bilateral at Évian was, therefore, less about warmth than about utility — a transactional recalibration by two leaders who have understood that their interests, however differently weighted, continue to converge.
The immediate test will be whether the Évian encounter imparts the political momentum required for the trade negotiations to produce a workable first tranche. India enters those talks carrying a structural disadvantage: the clock is running, the Americans know it, and Washington’s negotiators have shown little inclination to soften their positions on agriculture, dairy or the Section 301 proceedings.
On Wednesday, there was another not-so-good signal to India — the US Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) will revert to its earlier name, US Pacific Command (USPACOM). It was during President Trump’s first term that the name was originally changed in 2018 to signal the US commitment to an Indo-Pacific strategy.
Beyond the trade deal, the larger strategic canvas matters. India’s ability to position itself as an indispensable partner in spheres such as AI governance, critical minerals’ supply chains and Indo-Pacific security will continue to shape the India-US relationship. But it will be on a different, more transactional and perhaps difficult plane.
The Tribune, now published from Chandigarh, started publication on February 2, 1881, in Lahore (now in Pakistan). It was started by Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia, a public-spirited philanthropist, and is run by a trust comprising five eminent persons as trustees.
The Tribune, the largest selling English daily in North India, publishes news and views without any bias or prejudice of any kind. Restraint and moderation, rather than agitational language and partisanship, are the hallmarks of the newspaper. It is an independent newspaper in the real sense of the term.
The Tribune has two sister publications, Punjabi Tribune (in Punjabi) and Dainik Tribune (in Hindi).
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