Cong asks PM again to clarify truth in Trump’s claims of using tariff power to broker India-Pak ceasefire

Continuing with its persistent drumbeat of seeking a clarification from the government about the truth in US President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of using tariff power to broker India-Pak ceasefire, the Congress on Saturday tenaciously asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to “speak up.”

“This is the 11th time in 21 days that PM @narendramodi’s great friend and American President Donald Trump has made claims about how the ceasefire with Pakistan took place. When will the PM speak up,” Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh questioned in a post on platform X.

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Donald Trump on Friday (India time) again said the “deal” he is most proud of is that he was able to stop “potentially a nuclear war” between India and Pakistan through trade as opposed to through “bullets”.

During the last few days Trump had been repeating his claim that he told India and Pakistan that the US will stop trade with the two nations if they don’t stop the conflict.

Also, last fortnight US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, along with other Trump administration’s top officials have urged a New York-based US court to uphold the president’s sweeping tariff powers, warning that a legal setback could upend an “asymmetric” trade truce with China, embarrass Washington and reignite conflict between India and Pakistan.

Mr Lutnick, along with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, and Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio submitted their statements on Friday to the New York-based Court of International Trade, in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of small American businesses challenging US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

India has since ruled out that the issue of trade at all came up in talks between Indian and American leaders during its military clashes with Pakistan.

Flagging three previous news clips showing Mr Trump bragging “how he got the 4-Day India-Pakistan war to stop – US intervention and the use of the trade instrument to stop nuclear escalation,” Mr Ramesh underscored: “US President Donald Trump says, ‘Pakistan representatives are coming in next week. We’re very close to making a deal with India. And I wouldn’t have any interest in making a deal with either if they were going to be at war with each other.’”