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How Modi – Trump meeting goes in favour of US

How Modi – Trump meeting goes in favour of US

As Narendra Modi and Donald Trump met, a Pentagon agency said the U.S. State Department has approved the possible sale to India of a Boeing C-17 transport aircraft with an estimated cost of $366 million.

The United States also has offered to sell a naval variant of the Predator drone made by U.S. defense contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the White House said in a statement, a deal that would be worth more than $2 billion.

The United States has become the leading supplier of defense equipment to India, signing contracts worth more than $15 billion since 2008.

On Monday evening, Trump and Modi had a working dinner, the first time Trump has played host to a foreign dignitary at a White House dinner.

Trump administration officials have pointed to both leaders’ impact on social media – each has more than 30 million Twitter followers – as proof they are cut from the same cloth.

“If the chemistry is good, everything else gets sorted,” said an Indian official. “The only way is up. How much up we go depends on the leaders. If they click, we go up higher.”

Trade, however, remains an irritant, and on Saturday, leading U.S. congressmen complained in a letter to Trump that high-level engagement had failed to eliminate major barriers to U.S. imports and investment and had not deterred India from imposing new ones.

Indian officials reject suggestions that Modi’s “Make in India” platform is protectionist and complain about the U.S. regulatory process for generic pharmaceuticals and rules on fruit imports.

They stress the future importance of the huge Indian market to U.S. firms and major growth in areas such as aviation which will offer significant opportunities for U.S. manufacturers.

Among the Indian business executives in Washington for Modi’s visit was Ajay Singh, chairman of Indian budget airline SpiceJet, which in January announced a deal to buy up to 205 aircraft from Boeing, worth up to $22 billion at list prices.

Singh told Reuters that according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the deal would sustain up to 132,000 jobs.

“The market is growing 20-25 percent a year. Even at today’s pace you need 100 more planes a year just to keep pace with the market and we are not getting anywhere close to that number.”

“As our economy grows … we can potentially create a lot of jobs for Americans in the United States,” he said.

Boeing has estimated India will need 1,850 new aircraft worth $265 billion by 2036 to meet demand for air travel