President Barack Obama is expected to discuss economic issues with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday. Once Singh returns home, though, experts say his ability to address any problems the president raises could be severely restricted.

“What you essentially have is a politically weak, compromised, lame-duck prime minister,” said Bill Antholis, managing director of The Brookings Institution and a former economic adviser in the Clinton administration.

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With India’s economy slumping, Singh, who has been in power since 2004, has been polling poorly in advance of his country’s elections in the spring. As a result, he expects to step down and has endorsed Rahul Gandhi, the son of his Indian National Congress party’s president, Sonia Gandhi, to succeed him if the party remains in power — no sure thing.

The country’s GDP, in decline since the onset of the global recession, slowed to 4 percent growth in this year’s second quarter from a peak of 9 percent two years earlier. And in an effort to rein in inflation, India’s central bank tightened the money supply by raising rates on commercial banks, contributing to a slowdown in lending that has hurt businesses.

The economic developments could bolster long-standing protectionist policies, experts say, while relatively powerful regional parties force the weak coalition government to grapple with parochial issues. Recent polls suggest that problem could get worse after the spring elections.

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Antholis said of Singh: “It’s somebody who really is politically constrained in every direction right now. The only question is, will he try to do some lame-duck push to get things passed, and essentially take the political heat so that his successor in the party can run on a reform agenda?”

“Many people think that would be suicidal,” Antholis said.

India’s political and economic woes have led to a host of trade-related problems, American businesses say. Its government imposes strict rules requiring domestic businesses to purchase locally made supplies, they say. It also limits foreign ownership of businesses, ranging from banks to supermarkets.

Lax intellectual property protections are another problem, U.S. business groups say. They cite an uptick in efforts to revoke U.S. drug patents. The problems have gotten so bad that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers together launched a coalition called the Alliance for Fair Trade with India to address the issues.

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Singh’s challenges in addressing these issues were on full display this summer. When the prime minister sought a measure to allow more foreign companies to own businesses in India, a key member of his coalition, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, opposed the move, forcing Singh to round up votes from other parties and advance a weaker deal than he had hoped.

Leading the opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party has tapped a more Western friendly official, Narendra Modi, as its candidate for prime minister. Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, is known for cracking down on corruption, launching technology parks and other entrepreneur-friendly projects, aggressively pursuing real estate deals and seeking Western investment in his state.

But Modi also presents another set of problems: He was widely criticized in 2002 for taking insufficient action to stop a rash of anti-Muslim violence that led to more than 2,000 deaths. As a result, the United States revoked Modi’s diplomatic visa in 2005.

“I think generally speaking, from a business standpoint, he’s likely to pursue policies that Western investors might deem as more friendly,” Antholis said. “The challenge is, would the brand of India be tarnished by somebody who’s such a virulent nationalist and somebody that would have a hard time getting a visa to the United States?”

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Predicting India’s election outcome is tough, in part because the country of 1.2 billion doesn’t have just a single day of voting. The elections must take place by the end of May, but they will be spread out over three or four months, with election administrators moving to new regions in each round. Ballots will be counted on the final day.

Despite the political complexities of the moment, the Obama administration is taking a broad view of trade opportunities in India and investing energy in the relationship. Secretary of State John Kerry visited New Delhi in June and Vice President Joe Biden made a trip there in July. Friday’s meeting will be the third between Obama and Singh.

Singh’s visit “actually is kind of a culmination of a major engagement with the government of India that started at the beginning of the summer,” said Richard Rossow, South Asia director of McLarty Associates, an international consulting firm.

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But Republican and Democratic presidents have slowly made progress over the years in opening India’s market with both Singh’s Congress Party and Modi’s opposition party, he said.

Rossow cited some recent examples: India’s relaxation of “buy-local” mandate for its telecommunications industry, a law to protect multinational businesses from double taxation, and efforts to revive a stalled civil nuclear energy deal with the United States. And U.S. businesses are investing more in India despite the problems: Total foreign direct investment in India is at $12.5 billion this year through July — up from $11.8 billion at that point last year, Rossow said.

“Engagement itself actually has been a pretty good way to get movement on some of the key issues,” he said.