Donald Trump (AP)
US president Donald Trump made tall claims about the country’s economic and global influence, saying that “without US, everything in the world would die,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. He emphasized the rapid growth of the US economy during his first term, saying, “I made it really big in the first four years, then it started to degenerate with what this Biden administration did.”He also highlighted the role of tariffs in boosting the US’s financial strength, saying that, “the money coming in is so big because of tariffs and other things, but because of tariffs. Tariff gets us even those other things.Trump described the United States as “the hottest” and “the best financially. His remarks came amid renewed criticism of India’s tariff policies, citing Harley-Davidson as an example of what he called unfair trade practices. He argued that New Delhi imposes “tremendous tariffs, about the highest in the world,” while the US permits Indian goods to enter its market with minimal barriers.“They would send in massive, you know, everything they made, they’d send it in, pour it into our country. Therefore, it wouldn’t be made here, which is a negative. But we would not send in anything because they were charging us 100% tariffs,” he said, citing Harley Davidson as an example.Trump added that India had proposed reducing tariffs, but remarked that “it’s getting late.”During the press briefing on Wednesday, Trump also reiterated his claim of settling wars, claiming, “I settled seven wars, and numerous of those wars were because of trade.” Trump had previously claimed to have mediated six conflicts over the past six months, including one he said could have escalated into a “nuclear disaster, hinting at the India-Pakistan conflict.“If you look at Pakistan and India, planes were being knocked out of the air. Six or seven planes came down. They were ready to go, maybe nuclear. We solved that,” he said earlier this month. Trump’s remarks come at a time of strained relations between Washington and New Delhi, following the US decision to impose 50 percent tariffs on India, among the steepest globally.He said the US-India relationship had been “one-sided” for many years, a dynamic he claimed shifted after he took office.
