- Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna sounds “five-alarm fire” on Trump’s Indian tariffs.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to nominate US President Donald Trump for Nobel Peace Prize cause behind strained relations, says Khanna.
- Top US officials do not see the situation being repaired any time soon, claims John Bolton
Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna sounded the “five-alarm fire” on US President Donald Trump’s Indian tariffs, saying this is going to “destroy” a historical US-Indian partnership.
Khanna highlighted that Trump’s personal “ego” should not be allowed to undermine the US’s “strategic relationship” with the world’s largest democracy, and undo over three decades’ worth of bipartisan work to strengthen this alliance.
Referring to the 50 percent tariffs imposed on Indian goods, Khanna claimed that such disproportionately high tariffs are not only hurting India’s exports to the US, but also American manufacturers who export to India, while driving India closer to China and Russia.
Khanna also claimed that the issue was simply caused by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, allowing Pakistan to step in. He further referred to joint claims put out by Pakistan and the Trump Administration crediting Trump’s role in resolving the four-day border conflict between India and Pakistan, while India maintains the issue was an internal matter.
Former US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who claimed that Trump had caused a “huge strategic harm to America” by moving away from India, because of “Pakistan’s willingness to engage in business deals with his family.”
Khanna asserted that the current strained relations between India and the US stem from such issues, where Trump’s “ego” plays a major role in setting the direction of diplomatic relations. He also said it is imperative to protect this strategic partnership between the two countries to ensure that “America leads and not China” while calling out to Trump’s Indian-American voter base to comment on the matter.
Other officials, including Sullivan and John Bolton (served as NSA in the first Trump administration) have cautioned against Trump’s tariff policies, claiming that decades of efforts from the West to “wean India away from its Cold War attachment to Soviet Union Russia” are being upended. Bolton also said he does not see the situation being repaired in the near term. This comes in the wake of Modi’s bilateral meetings with Putin and Xi on the side-lines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, which US Treasury Secretary Bessent termed as “performative.”
(With inputs from PTI)
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