Trump again repeated his claim that he stopped the war between India and Pakistan, which he claimed could have turned nuclear, after he told the countries that Washington would not “trade” with Delhi and Islamabad.read more
US President Donald Trump reiterated his claim that he stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan by instructing his administration to “cancel all deals” with both nations, which he said led to their decision to end the fighting.
“We did some great work. India and Pakistan. That was going to be maybe nuclear. We did that. We did a lot of work. I don’t know if there’s ever been a president that’s done much more,” Trump said, as he spoke to reporters at the White House following several decisions from the US Supreme Court, including one limiting the power of lower courts regarding national injunctions in a birthright citizenship case.
Trump once again asserted that he halted a potentially nuclear conflict between the two countries by warning both nations that the United States would suspend trade with New Delhi and Islamabad.
“Serbia, Kosovo is going to go at it, going to be a big war. I said, ‘you go at it, there’s no trade with the United States…. That’s what happened with India and Pakistan. I was negotiating with both of them and I said to (Treasury Secretary) Scott (Bessent), I said to (Commerce Secretary) Howard (Lutnick), cancel all deals with India and Pakistan. They’re not trading with us because they’re in a war,” Trump said.
Trump said the two countries “called back. ‘What do we do?’ I said, ‘Look, you want to have trade with the United States. It’s great, but you want to go and start using nuclear weapons on each other. We’re not going to allow that.’ And they both agreed, both have great leaders. They both agreed not to do it. So so we did a lot,” Trump said.
He added that “some of the bigger countries, India, I think we’re going to reach a deal where we have the right to go in and trade. Right now it’s restricted. You can’t walk in there. You can’t even think about it. We’re looking to get a full trade barrier dropping, which is unthinkable and I’m not sure that that’s going to happen, but as of this moment, we’ve agreed to go into India and trade.”
“We’re going to be trading in China. That’s going to come a little bit down the road, but we’re going to be trading in China. We have a lot of great things going and we’re getting along with countries, but some will be disappointed. Because they’re going to have to pay tariffs, and we’ve taken in already hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, no inflation,” Trump said.
India and Pakistan reached an understanding on May 10 to end the hostilities after four days of intense cross-border drone and missile exchanges. While President Trump has repeatedly claimed that he “helped settle” the tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, India has firmly refuted those assertions.
New Delhi has maintained that the ceasefire understanding was the result of direct military-to-military communication between the Directors General of Military Operations (DGMOs) of India and Pakistan. According to Indian officials, the discussions were initiated at Islamabad’s request.
In a recent phone call with Trump, Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated India’s long-standing position that it does not and will never accept third-party mediation on its bilateral issues with Pakistan.
With inputs from agencies