Amid India-China bonhomie, Trump vents frustration again
By Sunil Kumar Batra
New Delhi, Sep 1 (BVI) As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping displayed signs of bonhomie during the SCO Summit, US President Donald Trump fired a fresh salvo tonight, saying India had conducted “one-sided” trade with America for decades with big tariffs and has “now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing but it’s getting late.”
Trump made the statement on his handle on social media platform Social Truth, days after the 50% tariffs imposed by him on Indian imports came into effect.
“It has been a totally one-sided disaster,” he wrote about the commerce between the US and India.
“The US does very little business with India, but they (India) do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, terming the US as India’s biggest client,” Trump wrote.
“But we sell them very little – until now a totally one-sided relationship, and it has been for 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,” he said.
Trump also said that India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, “very little from the U.S.”
The US has imposed 50 per cent tariffs on Indian imports, which includes 25 per cent punitive tariffs because India buys crude from Russia.
Trump and his Administration officials have been saying that by buying Russian oil, India is funding the Russian war against Ukraine.
India has maintained that it had the sovereign right to purchase oil from wherever its national interests are met.
India and the US have also been engaged in negotiations for a comprehensive trade deal. The trade negotiations have come to a halt as the US team cancelled its visit to India which was scheduled for the last week of August.
“They (India) have now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late,” Trump said, adding they should have done so years ago.
The US President’s latest salvo came as India and China, rivals but the fastest growing large economies, showed signs of bonhomie after 5 years of bitter ties triggered by the Ladakh aggression by Beijing.
Chinese President Xi warmly welcomed Prime Minister Modi in Tianjin for the SCO Summit and the two leaders also held bilateral talks during which both underlined that the two countries should be “partners” rather than “rivals”.
Xi also obliquely criticised Trump for imposing high tariffs on India, along with China, saying that “bullying” by anyone should not be accepted.
According to sources, Indian officials from the Ministry of Commerce are in constant touch with their counterparts in the US even as it termed the high tariffs as “unjustified” and “unreasonable”.
Ties between India and the US have hit a rough patch in the last few months, with Trump expressing himself strongly against India’s continued purchase of Russian oil. (BVI)
