The US Vice President JD Vance will be on an India visit from April 21, as both India and the US firm up ties with a focus on a bilateral trade deal in the next few months. During the four-day visit, Vance will be meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi and with family visiting Agra and Jaipur. He is the second top Trump admin official to visit India after DNI chief Tulsi Gabbard last month. His visit coincides with the visit of US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz who is expected to be in India from April 21 to 23. Both, Vance and Waltz, are expected to meet PM Modi on April 21, since PM Modi is likely to be in Saudi Arabia from April 22. 

Advertisment

PM Modi and Vance met on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, marking the former's first interaction with a Trump administration official. During the meet, PM Modi joined Vance’s family to celebrate his son Vivek’s birthday, gifting a wooden railway toy set to Vivek, a folk art jigsaw puzzle to Ewan, and a handcrafted alphabet set to Mirabel. At the AI summit, Vance endorsed PM Modi's view that AI enhances human productivity rather than replacing jobs. Vance's India connection is well known and stems from his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who was born to Indian immigrant parents from Andhra Pradesh. Usha’s Indian background has been a key talking point in India, especially when Vance's candidacy was announced last year in the run-up to the US elections.

The two key visits, of the US Vice President and NSA come in the background of Trump's announcement and then pausing of the reciprocal tariffs. Both sides are currently negotiating a Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA), aiming to boost bilateral trade to $500 billion by 2030. A US team, led by Assistant U.S. Trade Representative Brendan Lynch, visited India in March 2025 to finalize the BTA’s framework. Speaking at the Global Technology summit on Friday, EAM Jaishankar emphasised an "urgency" for the trade deal. He said, "Within a month of change in the administration, we actually have conceptually an agreement that we will do a bilateral trade agreement....We will find a fix that will work for both for us..This time around we are geared up for a high degree of urgency. We see a window here." 

Preparations are on for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's India visit as well to advance a new 10-year framework for the US-India Major Defense Partnership, something that was announced during PM Modi’s White House visit last month. 

Advertisment

India and Trump administration had established early contacts, with PM Modi and Donald Trump's telephonic talks in November 2024 after the latter's election victory and Jaishankar's December visit, during which he not only met Biden officials but incoming Trump team officials including then NSA Designate Mike Waltz.