New Delhi: India on Friday refused to react to US President Donald Trump’s latest post on his social media platform Truth Social, where he mentioned that US has lost India and Russia to “deepest, darkest China” and wished the three nations a prosperous future.
When asked about Trump’s latest post during a weekly media briefing on Friday, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal stated, “I have no comments to offer on this post at this time.”
Earlier in the day, in a post shared on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together! President Donald J. Trump.” The photograph of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping accompanied the post.
Trump’s statement comes after PM Modi and Putin visited China recently to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in Tianjin. During the August 31-September visit, PM Modi held bilateral meetings with both Xi and Putin on the sidelines of the summit. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping also held bilateral talks.
The video of all three leaders sharing an informal interaction just before the start of the summit also went viral on social media. The images showed all three leaders smiling and conversing, reminiscent of a similar photo taken during the BRICS Summit in Russia’s Kazan last year.
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday once again called the India-US relationship “one-sided for many years” pointing to high tariffs as a barrier to American exports.
“We get along with India very well,” Trump said. “But India, you have to understand, for many years, it was a one-sided relationship.”
He once again pressed his allegation that India’s tariffs on US exports are “about the highest in the world.”
“India was charging us tremendous tariffs, about the highest in the world. They were about the highest in the world, number one. And we therefore weren’t doing much business with India. But they were doing business with us because we weren’t charging them foolishly,” he added.
Trump argued that prior administrations had failed to act while India sent goods into the US market. “They would send in massive, you know, everything they made… pour it into our country. Therefore, it wouldn’t be made here. But we would not send in anything, because they were charging us 100 per cent tariffs,” Trump remarked.
India and the United States had been engaged in months of trade negotiations before the Trump administration abruptly imposed 25 per cent tariffs on Indian imports in August, later raising them to 50 per cent over New Delhi’s purchase of Russian oil.
Responding sharply to the US move, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had called the decision “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable”, stating that India’s energy needs and strategic autonomy must be respected.
(IANS)
