On Thursday US President Donald Trump will welcome Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House. Modi will be only the fourth foreign leader to visit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since Trump returned to office, following two meetings necessitated by an ongoing conflict (Israel and Jordan) and one with a decades-long military ally (Japan). Modi’s presence in these busy opening weeks reflects the administration’s appreciation of the strategic importance of the bilateral relationship to US global interests; it follows a meeting in Washington just the day after the inauguration between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and a call between Trump and Modi a few days later.
Trump and Modi clearly enjoy each other’s personal company—not too many other foreign leaders share Trump’s populist approach to politics and can draw fifty thousand people to fill an NFL stadium in Texas for a “Howdy, Modi!” rally, as the two leaders did in 2019. Nevertheless, Trump has followed his typical playbook to improve his leverage in advance of a negotiation. The US president has captured the attention of the Indian media with a series of threats to impose tariffs, while deporting Indians in the United States illegally on a military plane and in shackles and sanctioning an Iranian port that has been the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars of Indian investments. Trump will likely be in a position to declare some degree of victory after the meeting, as Modi is expected to offer concessions on India’s protectionist trade practices and greater cooperation on immigration enforcement.
But these achievements are likely to be relatively modest and thus unlikely to satisfy Trump’s desire to employ his bully pulpit to champion a big, transformative idea. Such ideas are especially appealing to Trump if they can draw upon his experience as a real estate developer, and even more attractive if he can present them as something that President Joe Biden failed to accomplish but where only he can succeed. Thankfully, such an idea exists—and Trump should take the opportunity to make it his own.
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is a plan to make trade cheaper, faster, and much larger across the Middle East through a twenty-first-century network of rail, maritime, and infrastructure corridors. This network would link the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea and facilitate the efficient transportation of goods, energy resources, and digital communications. It was launched during the 2023 Group of Twenty (G20) summit in New Delhi, at which point it was also announced that additional high-level multilateral meetings on the subject would commence in sixty days. Unfortunately, none of those meetings ever materialized. The Biden administration deprioritized the IMEC compared to other issues on its infrastructure and diplomatic agendas, and multilateral efforts largely ground to a halt.
Perhaps most appealing to Trump, US taxpayers would not be on the hook to finance this project.
Of course, this was largely due to Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, which made Arab governments understandably reluctant to publicly promote a project that would improve economic ties with Israel. But that doesn’t fully explain the lack of progress even behind the scenes. While the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and India have been busy building infrastructure and reducing trade barriers on a bilateral basis in anticipation of the IMEC, far less has been done across Saudi Arabia, and almost nothing has been accomplished in Jordan or Israel. While the Indian government has made the IMEC a top priority, Europe’s support is divided, with Greece, Italy, and France each seeking to elbow the other aside to be the primary IMEC gateway for the continent. Those worried about losing from the IMEC (Egypt) and those with competing but longer, and thus less efficient, trade infrastructure plans (Iraq and Turkey, Iran and Russia) have used this time to raise questions among Arab governments about the wisdom of establishing economic dependencies with Israel and the potential security vulnerabilities of the route.
As the ceasefire in Gaza holds and with Trump’s active endorsement and sustained support, however, all of this can change.
If Trump breathes new life into the IMEC, then tens of billions of dollars could soon be spent to improve or build ports, roads, trains, pipelines, and fiber optic cables that would expand and integrate the economies of Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. A completed overland route would reduce the number of ships traveling through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, and thus the requirements for the US Navy to defend against Houthi attacks on shipping, something presumably appealing to the Trump team. It would help counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative, diminish Tehran’s regional influence, reinforce the Abraham Accords—perhaps the most important foreign policy achievement of Trump’s first term—and help set the conditions for eventual Saudi-Israel normalization. Perhaps most appealing to Trump, US taxpayers would not be on the hook to finance this project, and US infrastructure companies could be major beneficiaries of the money that others spend.
Unfortunately, the United States is beginning far behind in the commercial race. European companies, backed by their governments, are rapidly organizing themselves for the opportunity, while Indian companies are eager to take advantage of the IMEC, with Modi’s strong support. In the infrastructure sector, the Adani Group* appears best positioned for the IMEC, having taken a 70 percent ownership stake in Israel’s Haifa Port Company at one end of the route and owning India’s largest commercial port on the other end. (On the European end, however, a Chinese company, which the Pentagon just blacklisted, is the majority owner of Greece’s Piraeus Port, presenting not dissimilar concerns to the ones Trump raised regarding the Panama Canal.) Similarly, Indian engineering and construction leaders such as Larsen & Toubro and Reliance Infrastructure are well-equipped to develop integrated transport networks, while Indian information technology multinationals, such as Tata, Infosys, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra, are poised to develop robust digital infrastructure along the corridor.
Trump should not abandon this field to India or Europe. Instead, on Thursday, with Modi by his side, Trump should announce his strong support for the IMEC—and assert that he wants to see the basic infrastructure across the region complete before the end of his administration. To ensure US leadership, he should match French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of a dedicated IMEC envoy, preferably someone with significant private sector experience, and he should call on other governments to do the same. He and Modi could together announce a meeting for those envoys in New Delhi in the spring and perhaps use the opportunity to similarly renew the relatively moribund I2U2 group (India, Israel, the United States, and the UAE), another promising Biden diplomatic initiative that has unfortunately not lived up to its potential. And finally, Trump should then direct Rubio and his soon-to-be commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, to organize their departments to employ US leverage to win contracts for US companies in order to level the playing field with Europe and India.
Thursday’s Trump-Modi meeting is already likely to be positive. If Trump uses the opportunity to relaunch the IMEC, it will become a real success.
William F. Wechsler is the senior director of Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council. His most recent US government position was deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combating terrorism.
Note: The Adani Group is a donor to the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center.
Further reading
Image: US President Donald Trump (R) arrives for a joint news conference with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, US, June 26, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo