There is a lot of hype around US secretary of state Marco Rubio’s India visit.One can also discern that the US is coercing the Indian government and private sector both into making a larger, holistic deal. The bigger picture is Rubio and Trump are trying to push for a comprehensive agreement with India going beyond trade. All this is happening in the midst of a cabinet minister being exposed for his “deeper links” with the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein.There are wheels within wheels. The US wants unprecedented access to the Indian market in order to export their products ($500 billion in five years) and is also seeking massive private capital investment from India in the US and vassal states like Venezuela. I am not too sure if Reliance Industries would want to invest billions in Venezuela which has been a graveyard for US oil majors like Chevron and ConocoPhillips because of unstable politics in the past. There is no guarantee how geopolitics will play out in Venezuela under Trump in the future. In any case there is little sanctity to any agreement you might reach with Trump if experience is anything to go by.Also read: Musk’s ‘Prime Minister Ambani’ Jibe Resurfaces as Rubio Photo Draws Comments on Social MediaMukesh Ambani will obviously seek guarantees. Things are not as simple as they seem. There remains a huge risk in putting big money in Venezuela. Besides, India is today suffering a drought of private capital, both domestic and foreign. Yet Trump wants big capital to come in from capital-scarce India. This is totally counter intuitive and makes little economic sense. Imagine the overall impact of India reducing its trade surplus with the US while simultaneously funnelling more private capital to that country. This strategy fits Marco Rubio’s famous statement at the Munich conference that the West should feel no guilt about its colonial past and remake its future accordingly.Also note that the prospect of higher-than-ever imports projected from the US and simultaneously large doses of Indian private capital infusion being promised to Trump is coming at a time when India’s external sector is very shaky and vulnerable to say the least. The rupee has been wobbly for over a year now and the RBI has been struggling to defend the rupee for a long time. India’s currency has been among the worst performing for the past two years as net Foreign Direct Investment inflows have been near zero. The Reserve Bank of India raised $140 billion from June to September through a special but costly NRI deposit scheme to inject confidence in India’s external sector stability. Half of the $140 billion NRI deposits have evaporated over the past month as RBI continues to heavily sell dollars to prevent a precipitous slide in the rupee’s value. Former finance secretary under the Modi government, Subhash Chandra Garg, did not mince words when he told The Wire that the world is losing confidence in India’s ability to manage its policy, whether it relates to currency, markets or, for that matter, trade.United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani during a visit to RIL’s Jamnagar Refinery Complex on October 21, 2026. Photo: Handout via PTI.It is against this backdrop that India is discussing a comprehensive trade and economic cooperation agreement with the Trump administration. Needless to say there is very little transparency about what is being discussed even now. There was an in principle agreement in February this year which was celebrated in the US as a major opening of India’s agriculture markets with the top US officials claiming India would move from being surplus to deficit in agriculture trade. This was music to the ears of Trump’s core constituency comprising farmers in America. Of course, subsequently serious concerns were expressed by the Indian farm sector forcing the Modi government to postpone negotiations.The timing of Marco Rubio’s claim that America is yet again very close to doing a big deal with India is interesting. It is coming about 10 days before the US mid term elections in which Trump is staring at a certain defeat in the house of representatives. Trump seems desperate to show some big gains coming to the US from India.One may also recall Trump’s claim sometime ago that the Ambanis had pledged to invest $300 billion in oil related projects in Texas. Even allowing for some Trumpian hype it is possible Mukesh Ambani may have committed, in principle, to looking at refinery and other oil related projects worth billions of dollars. The Adani group had later pledged $10 billion of investments in the US in the course of settling an alleged bribery charge against it in the US district courts.The moot question is what exactly is India’s strategy in making such big trade and investment commitments to the US when its own economy is capital starved and dealing with too many grave uncertainties.In the midst of all these uncertainties we also have the benefit of total silence from Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has not said a word on Rubio’s visit and various claims Trump is making about “a grand deal in the making with India.”