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Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is meet­ing Thurs­day with In­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di, who has heaped praise on him and is hop­ing to avoid tar­iffs that the new ad­min­is­tra­tion has slapped on oth­er coun­tries in its open­ing weeks.

Mo­di is a na­tion­al­ist and has talked up his warm re­la­tion­ship with Trump dur­ing his first term while cheer­ing his win­ning back the White House. The In­di­an leader is look­ing to im­prove re­la­tions with Wash­ing­ton and the West over­all, which have been frosty late­ly af­ter Mo­di re­fused to con­demn Rus­sia for its war on Ukraine.

The trip comes af­ter Mo­di’s rul­ing Hin­du na­tion­al­ist par­ty’s vic­to­ry dur­ing a high-stakes state leg­is­la­ture elec­tion last week­end in In­dia’s fed­er­al ter­ri­to­ry, in­clud­ing New Del­hi. The prime min­is­ter said be­fore leav­ing for Wash­ing­ton that the vis­it was a chance to “deep­en our part­ner­ship” in key ar­eas such as tech­nol­o­gy, trade, de­fence and en­er­gy.