Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi amid chaos over the Trump administration doubling the tariff imposition on goods from India to 50 per cent, calling it a “foreign policy disaster”.
He said that Trump’s 50 per cent tariffs come at a time when Indian diplomacy is “disastrously dithering.”
“You can’t even blame this foreign policy disaster on the 70 years of Congress,” Kharge posed on X, adding that the Prime Minister failed to negotiate a trade deal with the US.
“Now, Trump is intimidating and coercing us – but you keep quiet,” he said.
“India’s exports to the US amount to about Rs 7.51 lakh crore (2024). A blanket 50 per cent tariff means an economic burden of Rs 3.75 lakh crore. Our sectors, such as MSMEs, Agriculture, Dairy Engineering Goods, Electronic Goods, Gems & Jewellery, Drug Formulations & Biologicals, Petroleum Products, and Cotton made clothes, shall be hurt the most. Your government is clueless about how to deal with it,” Kharge added.
Intensifying his attack, Kharge argued that the Prime Minister “did nothing” in the union budget for key sectors, including Agriculture and MSMEs, to mitigate the effect of reciprocal tariffs that Trump had been planning for months.
“On November 30, 2024, Trump had threatened to impose a 100 per cent tariff on BRICS nations. PM Modi was sitting there, visibly smirking, while Trump declared ‘BRICS dead’. Trump has been planning “reciprocal tariffs” since months now. We all knew about it. You did nothing in the Union Budget to soften the blow on our key sectors such as Agriculture, MSMEs and various industries,” the Congress chief said.
He further called out PM Modi for “keeping mum” on claims made by Trump regarding a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
Kharge went on to say that India has navigated its bilateral relationship with the US with “self-respect and dignity” in the past despite threats.
“India’s national interest is supreme. Any nation that arbitrarily penalises India for our time-tested policy of strategic autonomy, which is embedded in the ideology of Non-alignment, doesn’t understand the steel frame India is made of. From the threats of 7th fleet to the sanctions of Nuclear tests, we have navigated our relationship with the US with self-respect and dignity,” he said.
US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on August 6 imposing an additional 25 per cent tariff on imports from India. Trump cited matters of national security and foreign policy concerns, as well as other relevant trade laws, for the increase, claiming that India’s imports of Russian oil, directly or indirectly, pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States.
Terming the United States’ move to impose additional tariffs on India over its oil imports from Russia as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) declared that New Delhi will take “all actions necessary to protect its national interests.
In further development, a senior United States Administration Official told ANI that there is simply “no comparison” between the hundreds of billions of dollars of growing Indian imports of Russian oil and the modest US imports of Russian goods.
In response to a question, the US official told ANI, “There is simply no comparison between the hundreds of billions of dollars of growing Indian imports of Russian oil, and the modest U.S. imports of Russian goods, which amount to less than 1% of the value of Indian imports”. (ANI)
