United States President Donald Trump has criticised his country’s relationship with India as “very one-sided” and stated that New Delhi had offered to reduce tariffs on US goods to zero.
Trump castigated New Delhi for what he depicted as a slanted economic relationship and India’s purchases of Russian weapons and oil in a social media post on Monday, marking a further deterioration of ties between the two countries.
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“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,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
“They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” he added.
New Delhi has yet to comment on Trump’s most recent remarks, and the US president has often made unfounded claims about other countries offering the US extravagant economic concessions amid the threat of high tariffs.
The post is the latest instance of Trump hitting out at India, previously seen as a partner of great significance as the US seeks to strengthen relationships with Asian nations sceptical of China’s growing regional power.
The US recently imposed tariffs as high as 50 percent on goods from India – among the highest announced by the Trump administration on scores of foreign nations – and criticised India for its purchase of Russian oil.
Trump’s tariff push has often been accompanied by exhortations to foreign leaders to buy more US products in areas such as energy and weapons manufacturing.
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“India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US,” he said on Monday.
But India has pushed back against the severe tariffs imposed by Washington with Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal recently stating that New Delhi “will neither bow down nor ever appear weak” in its economic relationships with other countries.
Trump’s aggressive efforts to reshape trade with the rest of the world, which he has depicted as one-sided and unfair to the US, could be pushing other countries into more collaborative relationships as they seek alternatives to an increasingly unpredictable US.
At a recent summit convened by China aimed at bolstering ties between non-Western nations, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Chinese President Xi Jinping that he is committed to improving their relationship.
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