Washington, Feb 21 (.) US President Donald Trump insisted that the India-US trade deal remains firmly on track and will not be affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling against his emergency tariffs, asserting that India will continue paying tariffs under the pact while the US will not.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said, “I think my relationship with India is fantastic, and we’re doing trade with India. India pulled out of Russia. India was getting its oil from Russia. And they pulled way back at my request, because we want to settle that horrible war where 25,000 people are dying every month.”
Earlier this month, the US and India announced they had reached a framework for an interim trade agreement after Trump issued an executive order removing the 25 percent punitive tariffs imposed on India for Russian oil purchases and reducing reciprocal duties from 25 percent to 18 percent.
Trump claimed that New Delhi committed to stop directly or indirectly importing energy from Moscow and instead purchase American energy products.
When asked if the court ruling would affect the trade deal with India, Trump replied, “Nothing changes.”
“They’ll be paying tariffs, and we will not be paying tariffs. So the deal with India is that they pay tariffs. This is a reversal of what it used to be, as you know, India and I think Prime Minister Modi is a great gentleman, a great man, actually, but he was much smarter than the people that he was against in terms of the United States, he was ripping us off. So we made a deal with India. It’s a fair deal now, and we are not paying tariffs to them, and they are paying tariffs. We did a little flip,” he added.
Trump further clarified, “The India deal is on…all the deals are on, we’re just going to do it” in a different way.
Stressing that his bond with Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “great,” Trump reiterated that he had stopped the war between India and Pakistan last summer using tariffs.
“I also stopped the war between India and Pakistan. As you know, there were 10 planes were shot down. That war was going and probably going nuclear. And just yesterday, the Prime Minister of Pakistan said President Trump saved 35 million lives by getting them to stop,” he said.
“And I did it largely with tariffs. I said, ‘Look, you’re going to fight, that’s fine, but you’re not going to do business with the United States, and you’re going to pay a 200 per cent tariff, each country’. And they called up and they said, ‘we have made peace’,” Trump added.
Earlier, Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court for striking down his sweeping tariffs imposed on countries around the world, while asserting that he used tariffs to end the India-Pakistan conflict.
The US Supreme Court ruled that Trump violated federal law by unilaterally imposing sweeping tariffs globally, denigrating individual justices as he vowed to continue a global trade war that has kept the world on edge for over a year.
The verdict was a striking loss for the White House on an issue central to the president’s foreign policy and economic agenda. It represents arguably the most significant setback for the second Trump administration at a conservative Supreme Court that has repeatedly sided with him in emergency rulings on immigration, agency leadership, and federal spending cuts.. .