US President Donald Trump said that there will be no change in the US trade position towards India, stressing that the current tariff arrangement benefits Washington.
Trump stressed that “the India deal is underway,” described his relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “wonderful” and reiterated his claims about trade with India.
“Nothing has changed. They will pay the tariffs and we won’t pay the tariffs… Prime Minister Modi is a great man. He was a lot smarter than the people he was against regarding the United States… He was cheating us. So we made a deal with India… We don’t pay them the tariffs and they do. We just flipped a little bit,” Trump said.
Trump also addressed bilateral relations.
He said: “My relationship with India is wonderful, and we trade with India. India withdrew from Russia. India was getting its oil from Russia, and they backed down from my request because we want to settle a horrific war in which 25,000 people die every month.”
“My relationship with Prime Minister Modi is great. I also stopped the war between India and Pakistan… Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Pakistan said that President Trump saved 35 million lives by getting them to stop. I did that largely through tariffs. And I said, ‘You want to fight, that’s fine, but you’re not going to do business with the United States, and you’re going to pay 200% tariffs, on every country.’ They called and said we made peace.”
India did not formally respond until 2 a.m. EST.
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Congress’s response to the US tariff decision
Opposition leaders, including Congress leader P Chidambaram, commented on the developments.
“I wrote in my column on Sunday, February 15, 2026, that if the Supreme Court overturns President Trump’s tariff imposition, the result will be that the United States and India will return to the status quo ante (before April 2, 2025). At the same time, the United States has extracted many concessions from India without giving up any of them. What will happen to those concessions?
The joint statement announced the elimination of tariffs on several goods that the United States will export to India; That India intends to import goods worth $500 billion from the United States; that India will not buy Russian oil; that India will address non-tariff barriers to US goods, etc. What will happen to those promises?
An Indian team is now visiting the United States to finalize the text of the framework agreement. What will the team do now?
The government must explain the impact of the ruling on the “deal” announced on February 6 between the US and India.”
