Washington: Over the last three-four months, Donald Trump has been making claims and issuing statements which India repeatedly countered and denied. Be it taking credit for the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May, or justifying the additional 25% tariffs by accusing India of indirectly funding Russia’s war in Ukraine through buying oil from Moscow, the US President seems to have upset Washington’s equation with New Delhi.
In his latest post on social media platform Truth Social, Trump said India had offered to reduce tariffs to zero, but that it was ‘getting late’.
A few hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Premier Xi Jinping at the SCO Summit in Tianjin, Trump claimed that trade with India has been a completely “one-sided disaster,” alleging that the US has been unable to sell goods to India because of its high tariffs.
“What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest ‘client’, but we sell them very little – Until now a totally one-sided relationship, and it has been for many decades. The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high Tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one-sided disaster,” Trump wrote.
He went on to claim, “They (India) have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago. Just some simple facts for people to ponder!!!”
Fact of the matter is that India never said they would drop all tariffs on goods imported from the US. As far as back in May, India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar countered US President’s the claim by saying talks are ongoing and “nothing is decided till everything is.”
As of now, trade talks between the two countries are on hold following the high tariffs put into place by the Trump administration.