Ivanka Trump joins in, makes visit a family affair

NEW DELHI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will be accompanied by not just his wife Melania and son-in-law Jared Kushner but also his high-profile daughter Ivanka on his maiden visit to India as president starting on Monday. The entire family is expected to travel together to the Taj Mahal in Agra from Ahmedabad on Monday evening, official sources involved in planning the trip said.
Ivanka and Kushner are technically US government officials with status as senior advisors to the president, but India has not been part of their portfolio.Neither are strangers to India in the personal sense, counting many Indians among friends and colleagues.
Kushner, in fact, visited India in 2018 for the wedding of his Harvard classmate Nitin Saigal in Jaisalmer. Ivanka came to Hyderabad for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in 2017.
The final list of the heavyweights accompanying Trump now reads Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, energy secretary Dan Brouillette and NSA Robert O’Brien.
Like Ivanka, Brouillette is a late addition to the list and his joining Trump suggests that a big energy agreement might be in the offing.
Official sources in Delhi said India was informed about Ivanka joining her father on the trip early on Friday. While she is expected to spend an entire day, February 25, in Delhi, her programme is still being chalked out.
According to the White House, Ivanka, in her role as advisor to the president, focuses on education and economic empowerment of women and their families as well as job creation and economic growth through workforce development, skills training and entrepreneurship. Ivanka is known to promote women’s entrepreneurship and empowerment world over in the form of her “signature policy’’, Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative. Ivanka has shown in the past, even if controversially, that she doesn’t mind dabbling in foreign policy. She famously provided a White House video readout of PM Narendra Modi’s meeting with Trump from the margins of the G20 summit in Osaka last year.
Ivanka had accompanied her father to Osaka as a member of his official delegation and her attempt to “insert’’ herself into a conversation featuring French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and UK PM Theresa May was roundly criticised by the US media.
Ivanka, though, has had experience of travelling to India after her father became president. She led the US delegation at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 in Hyderabad and also interacted with Modi. The focus at the summit was on providing support to women entrepreneurs.