A tense phone call between US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June has driven relations between Washington and New Delhi to their lowest point in years, Bloomberg reported, citing Indian officials.
The 35-minute call on June 17 came weeks after a four-day flare-up between India and Pakistan ended in a ceasefire that Trump publicly claimed to have brokered– saying his intervention averted a potential “nuclear war.”
According to Bloomberg, Modi told Trump during the call that the truce was arranged directly between New Delhi and Islamabad, with Pakistan requesting it.
Modi reportedly sought to “set the record straight” after learning Trump planned to host Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Asim Munir the next day at the White House. Concerned Trump might stage an unplanned Modi–Munir meeting, the Indian leader declined an invitation to stop by Washington en route from Canada.
After the exchange, Indian officials detected a sharp change in tone from the White House.
Trump began openly attacking India’s trade policies, imposing a 50% tariff on Indian goods– half of it, he said, as punishment for buying Russian oil and weapons. The move threatens decades of US strategy positioning India as a counterbalance to China.
Trump has since described India’s economy as “dead,” its trade barriers as “obnoxious,” and accused New Delhi of financing Russia’s war in Ukraine. On Friday, he again claimed credit for ending the India–Pakistan hostilities, saying he urged the nuclear-armed rivals to “focus on trade, not war.”
Recalling the 2019 skirmish that saw several aircraft shot down, Trump told reporters: “That was a big one… it could have gotten very, very bad.”
He made the remarks during a trilateral peace summit with Azerbaijan and Armenia, which ended in a US-brokered agreement and renewed calls from both nations to award Trump the Nobel Peace Prize– an honour he has openly sought.
