India offered to cut tariffs to nothing, but it’s late: Trump after PM Modi meets Xi, Putin

Hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held bilateral discussions with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, Trump threw a fresh salvo in the ongoing India-US tariff tussle.

Trump claimed that the Indian government had offered to cut tariffs on US goods to zero.

“They (India) have now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing, but it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” Trump said on Truth Social. The Indian government did not issue a formal response to Trump’s claim.

Trump described India-US trade ties as a “one-sided business”, emphasising that US businesses struggle to sell in India due to high tariffs imposed by New Delhi. “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, it's been a totally one-sided relationship, and it has been for many decades,” Trump said.

“The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high tariffs — the highest of any country — that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one-sided disaster,” he added.

Trump also criticised New Delhi for purchasing oil and military products from Russia, saying, “India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US.”

The Trump administration has imposed 25 per cent reciprocal tariffs on India and an additional 25 per cent levies for Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, bringing the total duties imposed on India to 50 per cent, among the highest in the world.

India has called the tariffs imposed by the US “unjustified and unreasonable”.