MARYLAND: “We’re not treated very well by India … but I happen to like Prime Minister Narendra Modi a lot,” Trump told reporters outside Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. “We can have a trade deal with India, but I’m really saving the big deal for later on,” he said. “We’re doing a very big trade deal with India. We’ll have it. I don’t know if it’ll be done before the election, but we’ll have a very big deal with India,” he said, in a transcript of remarks released by the White House.

As Trump heads to India on his first official trip on Monday, negotiators have been trying for weeks to put together a limited accord giving the US greater access to India’s dairy and poultry markets and lowering tariffs on other products. But no breakthrough has yet been announced and a planned trip by United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer was canceled, underlining the difficulties the two sides face in narrowing differences ahead of Trump’s visit.

The United States is India’s second largest trade partner after China, with their goods and services trade hitting a record $142.6 billion in 2018. Last year, the United States had a $23.2 billion goods trade deficit in 2019 with India, its ninth largest trading partner in goods.

Since Trump took office in 2017, long-standing trade differences between the world’s biggest democracies have come to the fore, with Trump calling India the tariff king. The two have warred over everything from tariffs on farm goods to Harley Davidson motorbikes and price caps on medical devices and India’s new rules on local data storage.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has tried to build a personal rapport with Trump, is pulling out all the stops for his visit, hosting him next week in Modi’s western home state of Gujarat for a reception in a cricket stadium.