United States President Donald Trump on Sunday reiterated the claim that he stopped a potential war between India and Pakistan by leveraging the threat of tariffs. Speaking to Fox News, the Republican leader asserted that ‘seven planes were shot down at the time of escalating tensions in May between both nuclear-armed neighbours.
“I’ve ended, you know, eight wars that we just mentioned. Five of them have been ended because of tariffs. The threat of tariffs, as an example, kept India and Pakistan–two nuclear nations–from going at it,” Trump said during the interview.
The US President further added, “They were going at it-seven planes were shot down. That’s a lot. And they were going at it. That could have been a nuclear war.” Trump’s remarks refer to the heightened tensions this year following a series of precision strikes on nine terrorist camps in Pakistan under India’s ‘Operation Sindoor’, in retaliation for the Pahalgam attack in Jammu-Kashmir on April 22 that killed 26 civilians.
The US President reaffirmed that the threat of imposing 200% tariffs led to a de-escalation. “I said to India and Pakistan pretty much the same thing: ‘Look, if you’re going to fight each other, I’m not going to do business with you. We’re going to put on a 200 per cent tariff. It’ll make it impossible for you to do business,” Trump said.
“No, no, no,’ they said. And after 24 hours, I settled the war. I settled it through trade,” he claimed. In fact, a day after India cleared the air that no conversation took place between the US President and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Donald Trump repeated his claim that New Delhi is “not going to be buying Russian oil anymore.” During a bilateral lunch with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House on Friday, the Republican leader reiterated his comments about PM Modi’s “assurance” to halt Russian oil imports.
ALSO READ: Zelenskyy Ready to Meet Putin in Budapest, Asks Trump for Increased Pressure on Russia
