Trump calls Modi 'very terrific man', but sticks to mediation claims, stands by tariff threat

Even as he praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “a very terrific man”,US President Donald Trump stuck to his threats of “a very strong tariff system” against anyone over the Ukraine-Russia war, and gave an embellished narrative of his role in ending the Operation Sindoor conflict.

With the 25 per cent punitive sanctions for buying Russian oil to hit India on Wednesday, Trump defied logic and said on Tuesday that he could use tariffs as a weapon to force an end to the war in Ukraine, but not right now against Russia, the country that started the conflict.

In the same vein of twisted logic, the Department of Homeland Security on Monday circulated a draft notification that it was imposing on Wednesday a 25 per cent tariff on India to address “threats to the United States by the Government of the Russian Federation”.

That is to be on top of the 25 per cent announced earlier, with exemptions for some items like electronics and pharmaceuticals.

Speaking to reporters at the end of his open cabinet meeting on Tuesday, he said he could use “a very strong tariff system that's very costly to Russia or Ukraine, or whoever we have”.

He said his campaign to end the Ukraine War “will not be a world war, but it could be an economic war, and an economic war is going to be bad, and it's going to be bad for Russia”

But, he added, “And I don't want that now”.

“It's very, very serious, what I have in mind if I have to do it,” he said.

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He has set different deadlines for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to meet Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for negotiations or face severe consequences.

One of them announced after his August summit with Putin was to expire on Thursday, but Trump extended it last Friday to 5 September.

Asked if he was sticking to his deadline for Putin to hold the negotiations, he did not give a direct answer.

He said that there was a problem getting both of them to agree to negotiate.

If one agreed, the other didn’t, he said, and “I got to get them both at the same time”.

He said that “Zelensky is not innocent either”, while saying he had good relations with Putin.

From the talk of the Ukraine War, which he has not been able to resolve despite saying during his campaign that he would end it in a day, Trump veered off to the India-Pakistan conflict.

In his account of the claim of stopping the conflict spawned by the terrorist attack in Pahalgam by The Resistance Front, an affiliate of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, Trump asserted he stopped a nuclear war.

He said he was moved to act when seven or more jets were shot down.

Between the two neighbours, “the hatred was tremendous” and it has been going on, "with sometimes with different names for hundreds of years”, he said, perhaps alluding to the timeline of Islamic invasions and resistance to Muslims, since Pakistan and India are only 78 years old.

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About his conversation with PM Modi, he did not mention a trade threat, which he did in the context of Pakistan.

“I'm talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India. They're saying, ‘What's going on with you in Pakistan’," he said.

“And I'm talking to Pakistan on trade, they said, ‘What's going on with you in India,” he said.

“I don't want to make a trade deal. You're gonna have a nuclear war," he said he told them. "And that was very important to them”.

"Or we're going to put tariffs on you that are so high,” he said, "your head's going to spin”.

Turning to commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, he said, “You were there”.

“Within about five hours, it was done,” he said.

But he added, “Maybe it starts again -- I don't know, I don't think so -- but I'll stop it if it does”.

India has denied that Trump mediated the ceasefire, and PM Modi told him so in a phone call in June.

India says that Pakistan’s Director General of Military Operations (DGMO) Major General Kashif Abdullah called India’s DGMO Lt Gen Rajiv Ghai, offering a truce.