September 2, 2025
NEW DELHI – US President Donald Trump on Monday claimed that the United States has done very little business with India over the years due to high Indian tariffs on American goods, while India has been able to export large volumes of products to the US. He described the situation as a “one-sided disaster.”
Trump said India has now offered to cut tariffs to “nothing,” but added, “it’s getting late”.
The US President posted on Truth Social, “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…India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US. They have now offered to cut their Tariffs to nothing, but it’ getting late. They should have done so years ago… (sic).”
Trump’s decision to double tariffs on Indian imports—raising them to as high as 50%—came into effect last Wednesday, dealing a major setback to relations between the two democracies that had grown into strategic partners in recent decades.
Notably, the US has said that it imposed secondary sanctions on India in the form of high tariffs as a penalty for continuing to purchase Russian oil. According to President Trump, India’s oil trade with Russia indirectly supports Moscow’s military operations in Ukraine. In response to the tariffs, PM Modi has asserted that he will safeguard the interests of small industries and farmers.
Trump’s remarks came as PM Modi attended the SCO Summit in Tianjin, China, where his camaraderie with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin was prominently visible throughout the event.