President Donald Trump on Sept. 1 stunned everyone with a bold claim on his social media platform Truth Social about trade negotiations with India, asserting that the country had offered to cut all tariffs to “nothing,” a move that, he said, comes too late to make a difference.
The announcement underscores the escalating tensions in U.S.–India trade relations, where weeks of tariffs and counter-tariffs have rattled businesses and investors alike. “It’s too late now,” Trump emphasized, signaling frustration with what he portrayed as delayed concessions.
Trump took to his social platform in a fiery outburst, asserting that the relationship between the United States and India has “a totally one-sided relationship.” He criticized what he described as a longstanding imbalance, suggesting that previous trade dealings and agreements have disproportionately favored India, leaving the U.S. at a disadvantage.
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“What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us… They sell us massive amounts of goods… but we sell them very little,” Trump wrote. “Until now a totally one-sided relationship, and it has been for many decades,” the President said in one of his Truth Social posts.
He further claimed that U.S. businesses have long been shut out of the Indian market, pointing to what he described as “the most” severe tariffs of any country. Noting that India has now proposed cutting tariffs to zero, Trump shot back, “It’s getting late. They should have done so years ago,” highlighting his frustration over what he sees as years of missed opportunities in bilateral trade.
Trump also highlighted India’s ongoing dependence on Russia for oil and military hardware, noting that the country purchases “very little” from the United States in these critical sectors. He framed this as another example of the imbalance in the bilateral relationship, emphasizing the limited role U.S. exports play despite America’s strategic and economic interests.
Trump’s comments follow closely on the heels of his administration’s broad trade penalties against India, a move that has drawn firm resistance from New Delhi. Meanwhile, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi engaged in high-level discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, underscoring India’s continued diplomatic balancing act amid rising trade tensions.
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Data from News18 shows that in 2024-25, bilateral trade between India and the United States totaled $131.8 billion with India exporting $86.5 billion worth of goods to the U.S. and importing $45.3 billion. Talks on a trade deal between the two nations have stalled, largely due to India’s refusal to fully open its agricultural and dairy sectors.
The Trump administration has hit India with hefty trade penalties, imposing 25 percent reciprocal tariffs along with an additional 25 percent levy on Delhi’s Russian oil purchases. Combined, these measures bring the total duties on Indian goods to 50 percent, placing them among the highest tariffs any country faces globally and marking a sharp escalation in the ongoing trade standoff. In the meantime, Modi has eased the taxes and asked the citizens to rely on country’s available and manufacturing resources. Even RBI has liquified so as to generate employment. In such a scenario, India is also diversifying its export market to other countries as well.