‘Not the behaviour of an American President’: Opposition leaders slam Trump over tariff hike

The opposition’s INDIA bloc parties on Thursday slammed the 50 per cent tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump on Indian imports to the United States, saying the behaviour of Trump is unbecoming of an American President.

“The way he (Trump) has been behaving with India, it does not seem at all like the behaviour of an American President,” said Congress MP Sukhdeo Bhagat.

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He, however, also questioned the silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “PM Modi should break his silence and answer,” he added.

His Congress colleague Pramod Tiwari also opposed the “economic burden” on India and demanded the rollback of US tariffs.

“We oppose this economic burden that Trump has imposed on India because it will affect our exports. We want to say that the tariff imposed by America should be withdrawn,” Tiwari said.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi slammed the US hypocrisy, saying Washington is forgetting its own trade with Moscow.

“The way Donald Trump is particularly targeting India about Russian Oil, totally forgetting his own hypocrisy of doing trade with Russia, the EU’s trade with Russia, and also China’s trade with Russia, and even Turkey has been a big buyer of Russian oil,” she said.

The Shiv Sena (UBT) MP further echoed Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, saying the US is arm-twisting India into a trade deal.

Reacting to the US President’s additional 25 per cent tariffs on India, Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said that the US move was an “economic blackmail” to bully India into an unfair trade deal.

The remarks of the Opposition leaders came against the backdrop of the US move to double the tariffs on India for buying Russian oil.

Trump signed an executive order last night, hitting India with additional tariffs. This took the total tariffs on Indian articles to 50 per cent, the highest among the major US trade partners and on par with Brazil.