– This is the script of CNBC's news report for China's CCTV on June 27, Tuesday.
Welcome to CNBC Business Daily, I'm Qian Chen.
When Modi meets Trump on Monday at the White House for the first time, a big elephant will be in the room: trade deficit and the hotly contested H-1B program.
On the trade front, in 2016, India had a trade surplus of 30.8 billion USD with the US. Even though it's not even comparable with China's trade surplus with the US at 309.6 billion USD, trade deficit has been a concern of the Trump administration.
So here in the meeting, Modi will likely communicate India's strong desire to buy more U.S. arms, which may appease Trump's interest in increasing U.S. exports.
[ANIL GUPTA, University of Maryland Professor of Strategy & Globalization] "At least for the 3 areas, for example, the sales of defence goods from the US to India, sale of natural gas, sale of Boeing aircraft to India for example, I think theres reason for potential optimism, in the trade relationship betweem India and the US for a little bit more balanced."
On the other hand, the tech sector is the area that these two countries see future cooperations.
Silicon Valley was well-represented at the meeting, with Apple's CEO Tim Cook, Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai and Adobe's Shantanu Narayan attending.
For the issue of H-1B visas, India continues to be a big beneficiary of this popular visa program. This is a key way that Indian IT talent makes its way to the U.S. to work for Silicon Valley's biggest companies, such as Apple, Google and Accenture, among others.
However, many are criticizing Indian outsourcing companies for flooding the H-1B lottery with candidates a snag most of the applicants.
[SHAILESH KUMAR, Eurasia Group Senior Analyst, Asia] "I think the focus going forward is gonna be to focus on areas where the two can work together, and trade, terrorism and defence fit into this, and minimizing areas of disagreement in Paris agreement, H1B visas, and of course trade deficit fit to that category, but what was surprising is that you didt see the big mention on the visa topic, which is of course an sensitive issue in India."
CNBC's Qian Chen, reporting from Singapore.