US has ‘totally one-sided’ trade relationship with India, claims Donald Trump

United States President Donald Trump claimed on Monday that his country has a “totally one-sided” trade relationship with India and reiterated his allegations that New Delhi charges inordinately high tariffs on American goods.

Trump made the statement on his social media platform Truth Social on a day when India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

The meeting took place five days after a 50% tariff rate on goods imported from India to the US took effect.

The Donald Trump administration had announced on August 6 that it would double the tariffs on goods imported from India to 50% for purchasing Russian oil amid the Ukraine war. A 25% so-called reciprocal tariff had already taken effect.

On Monday, Trump said: “What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us.”

“In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest ‘client,’ but we sell them very little,” he added. “Until now a totally one-sided relationship, and it has been for many decades.”

Trump claimed that India’s high tariffs have been preventing American businesses from selling their goods in the country, leading to what he called a “totally one-sided disaster”.

Trump also reiterated his claim that...

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