Trump Says India Offered to Eliminate Tariffs on US Goods
President Donald Trump claimed that India offered to "cut their Tariffs to nothing," as India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, stood firm against U.S. tariff pressure and promised deeper trade ties with Russia.
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On Monday, Sept. 1, Trump posted on social media that India has charged "such high Tariffs, the most of any country" on U.S. goods, making the trade relationship "a totally one sided disaster!" He also accused India of buying "most of its oil and military products from Russia," and very little from the U.S. He then said that India had offered to reduce its tariff rate on U.S. goods "to nothing," but that "it's getting late. They should have done so years ago."
India's government has not publicly responded to Trump's claim that it had offered to eliminate its tariffs on U.S. goods.
Officials in the Trump administration have defended the effective tariff rate of 50% on Indian goods as necessary to pressure India to stop buying Russian oil, propping up Russia's war machine in Ukraine (see 2508250049 and 2508190047). India's Modi, however, seems undaunted in the face of U.S. pressure and posted photos on social media of himself with Russia's Vladimir Putin at a summit in China. In Russian, he said that he and Putin had an "excellent meeting" and discussed how to "deepen bilateral cooperation in all spheres, including trade."