Media365
US President Donald Trump has once again claimed credit for averting a potential war between India and Pakistan, saying he used the threat of steep trade tariffs to stop the two nuclear-armed neighbours from “going at it.“Speaking to Fox News on Sunday (local time), Trump said his administration leveraged economic pressure to defuse tensions following India’s Operation Sindoor in May, when forces carried out precision strikes on nine terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 civilians.
“They were going at it — seven planes were shot down. That’s a lot. And they were going at it. That could have been a nuclear war,” Trump said, adding that his trade threats “settled the war.”The Republican leader claimed that by warning both New Delhi and Islamabad of 200 per cent tariffs, he pushed them to step back from the brink.“I said to India and Pakistan pretty much the same thing: ‘Look, if you’re going to fight each other, I’m not going to do business with you. We’re going to put on a 200 per cent tariff. It’ll make it impossible for you to do business’,” Trump asserted.This isn’t the first time Trump has boasted of “ending” conflicts through tariffs. During the interview, he said he had “ended eight wars,” five of them “because of tariffs.”However, India has consistently refuted Trump’s repeated claims of mediation, insisting that the country’s military and diplomatic measures were independent of any foreign intervention.
