Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi welcomes U.S. President Donald Trump to the stage at NRG Stadium ... [+]
India has been one of the United States' fastest-growing trade partners over the last quarter century, having gone from ranking as the nation's No. 27-ranked trade partner to No. 9 in that time.
As one expression of that clout, India recently replaced Israel as the United States' No. 1 source of diamonds. It is also a leading, fast-growing source of pharmaceuticals, rivaling more advanced European countries like Ireland and Belgium.
But, last night, as President Trump appeared at a rally with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Houston with 50,000 largely Indian-Americans present, one day after the two countries announced what is one of the largest liquid natural gas deal in history in the nation's energy capital, it is clear it is also one of the more complicated relationships.
That relationship has a new wrinkle in the name of the world's most famous philanthropist, Bill Gates, and a now-controversial award the foundation he and wife Melinda intend to give tomorrow to the recently reelected president.
Trump, appearing Sunday in Houston's football stadium with Medi, said, "You have never had a better friend as president than President Donald Trump,” as the crowd roared with approval.
But it's not that simple.
Certainly, two feathers in his cap are former ambassador to the United Nations, Nicki Halley, and the head of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, both Americans of Indian decent, among others.
But in March, complicating the relationship was President Trump's decision not to extend trade preferences to India.
Then came Modi's controversial invasion of Kashmir, inflicting additional tension in a long-term relationship between India, a largely Hindu nation, and Pakistan over the disputed, largely Muslim territory.
President Trump created friction by offering to help mediate the dispute, an offer that was not well received.
And now comes Gates, who with his wife Melinda, is trying to tackle some of the world's most difficult problems in the developing world.
One of those problems is basic sanitation, which leads to hundreds of thousands of deaths every year because of an ailment that is easily treated in the United States but not in many parts of the world: diarrhea.
Over the last couple of years, India has built low-cost toilets giving access to about half of the nation's more than 1 billion people, an enormous step in efforts to tackle deaths from diarrhea. The Gates Foundation wants to celebrate that, to reinforce it.
Some, including three Nobel Peace Prize winners and 100,000 signatories to a petition, upset that the Gates Foundation will be awarding Modi for his success in installing all these low-cost toilets, given the situation in Kashmir, are protesting.
Sorting through it all will certainly be delicate.
But given the deal announced the day before Trump traveled to Houston to appear with Modi at a rally attended by 50,000, a rally sold out before Trump announced he would attend, with a waiting list of 5,000, it's clear that India will continue to rank among the United States'later trade partners.
Under the deal, an Indian company, Petronet, will invest $2.5 billion in Tellurian’s proposed Driftwood LNG export terminal in Lake Charles, La. As part of the deal, energy-hungry India, trying to pull away from coal, gets rights to 5 million metric tons of LNG per year over the lifespan of the project.
