Welcome to the President's inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boy's

Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.

This week's topic is Modi meets Trump.

With me to discuss how U.S. relations with India are likely to evolve in the wake of Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi's meeting last week with Donald Trump is Tanvi Madan.

Tanvi is a senior fellow in the Center for Asia Policy Studies in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Her work explores India's foreign policy and especially its relations with China and the

United States. She is the author of Fateful Triangle, how China shaped U.S. India Relations during the Cold War,

and the host of the Global India Podcast at Brookings, which I highly recommend. Tanvi recently

wrote an article for Foreign Affairs titled, India is Hoping for a Trump bump. Tanvi, thank you for

joining me on the president's inbox. It's great to be back on the podcast with you, Jim. Tanvi, thank you for joining me on the president's inbox.

It's great to be back on the podcast with you, Jim.

Tanvi, we are talking in the shadow of the recently wrapped up meeting between Narendra Modi and

Donald Trump.

Can you give me a 40,000-foot sort of recap of what we think happened in those conversations?

I think if you think about this

visit, one thing to remember is how unusual, even unprecedented it has been for an Indian

Prime Minister to come to the U.S. this early into an administration. And I think what

lay behind it is India's attempt to do two things, some brush clearing,

which is essentially to try to avoid any flare-ups, as we've seen with other American partners and allies,

and also lay the kind of groundwork for future progress in the relationship.

So that was the brush clearing.

I think the second thing you saw is an attempt to try to do some tone and agenda

setting for the next four years of the relationship, both bilaterally and vis-a-vis

...