‘It’s all bravado, India would be back for negotiations in months’: U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick
New Delhi: U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Friday dismissed India’s strong reaction to Donald Trump’s retaliatory tariffs as mere “bravado,” saying New Delhi feels it is “good to fight with the biggest client in the world,” referring to the United States.
Lutnick added that it wouldn’t be too long before Indian businesses would soon pressure the government to strike a deal with Washington.
“So, I think what happens is it's all bravado, because you think it feels good to fight with the biggest client in the world, but eventually your businesses are going to say you've got to stop this and go make a deal with America,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
‘India is going to be at the table in a month or two’
The commerce secretary further predicted that trade talks with the Trump administration would resume shortly.
“So, I think yes, in a month or two months, I think India is going to be at the table, and they're going to say they're sorry, and they're going to try to make a deal with Donald Trump,” Lutnick told Bloomberg.
“And it will be on Donald Trump's desk how he wants to deal with (Narendra) Modi, and we leave that to him. That's why he's the President,” he added.
His comments came hours after Trump posted on Truth Social a photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with the caption: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”
When asked if India was being unfairly targeted for buying Russian oil while China and European nations continue similar imports, Lutnick said that prior to the Ukraine war India sourced under two percent of its crude from Russia, a share that has since risen to “40%.”
“What they're doing is, because the oil is sanctioned, it's really, really cheap because the Russians are trying to find people to buy it. And so the Indians have just decided, ‘Ah, the heck with it. Let's buy it cheap and make a ton of money’,” he said, calling the approach “plain wrong” and “ridiculous.”
Lutnick stressed that India must decide where it stands geopolitically.
Highlighting America’s market dominance, he said India and China ultimately depend on access to the U.S. consumer.
“We are the consumer of the world. People have to remember, it's our $30 trillion economy that is the consumer of the world. So eventually they all have to come back to the customer, because we all know eventually the customer is always right,” Lutnick remarked.
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