Great respect for ‘friend’, going to have a good trade deal: Trump on PM Modi 

United States President Donald Trump called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “fantastic leader” and a “great friend”, and expressed confidence that they will have a good trade deal.

“I have great respect for your prime minister. He’s a fantastic man and a friend of mine. We are going to have a good deal,” Trump said.

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President Trump was in Davos to attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) where he was asked a question on the India-US trade agreement.

Recently, Trump highlighted his relationship with PM Modi, saying the Indian PM was not happy with him after the US raised tariffs on Indian goods over India’s purchase of Russian oil.

“I have a very good relationship with PM Modi, but he is not happy with me, as India is paying high tariffs. But now they have reduced it very substantially, buying oil from Russia,” Trump had said while speaking at the House Republicans’ Retreat at the Kennedy Center on January 6.

In a separate development, while speaking at the WEF, President Trump said that the US will receive around USD 600 billion in tariff revenue.

“We’re doing numbers in terms of people investing in the United States as we’ve never had before,” he said.

Trump said the tariffs are aimed at protecting the country, which he said had been taken advantage of for years.

Further, Trump also reiterated his claim of having mediated multiple international conflicts, including between India and Pakistan.

“I’ve now been working on the Russia-Ukraine war for one year, during which time I settled eight other wars, including India, Pakistan. Vladimir Putin called me and said, ‘I can’t believe you settled Armenia-Azerbaijan.’ They were going on for 35 years. I settled in one day,” Trump said.

On NATO and European countries, he reiterated his long-standing criticism of their defence spending.

“Until I came along, NATO was only supposed to pay 2 per cent of GDP, but they weren’t paying. Most of the countries weren’t paying anything. The United States was paying for virtually 100 per cent of NATO,” he said.

Notably, India and the US have proposed a bilateral trade agreement outlined in February last year that aims to more than double bilateral trade to USD 500 billion by 2030.

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had said both sides remain committed to a bilateral trade agreement.

“India and the United States were committed to negotiating a bilateral trade agreement. The two sides have held multiple rounds of negotiations to reach a balanced, mutually beneficial trade agreement,” he said.