Leaders are gathering in Gyeongju, South Korea, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, a grouping that promotes trade, investment and economic cooperation among the economies of the Asia-Pacific region. Before its main event begins on Friday, this year's summit was already dominated by a meeting on the sidelines Thursday between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, who agreed to cool trade tensions for the time being.
During Trump's Howdy, Modi speech, he said, "You have never had a better friend as President than President Donald Trump, that I can tell you." There are more than five million people of Indian origin in the U.S., and in three Presidential elections Trump has steadily increased his vote share in that group, from under thirty per cent, in 2016, to nearly forty per cent last year, according to some estimates. (Modi is tremendously popular with the Indian diaspora.)