'Your Head's Going to Spin': Trump Says He Warned India, Pak

New Delhi | Desk: U.S. President Donald Trump has once again claimed that he prevented a war between India and Pakistan by threatening to impose tariffs and cancel trade deals. 

Trump said that he warned the neighbours of imposing tariffs so high that their heads were “going to spin.”

The 50% U.S. tariff on India has come into effect from August 27.

Speaking at a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday, Trump took credit for defusing tensions between India and Pakistan and shared details of his conversation with PM Modi.

“I am talking to a very terrific man, Modi of India. I said, ‘What’s going on with you and Pakistan?’ Then I spoke to Pakistan about trade. I said, ‘What’s going on with you and India?’ This has been going on for a hell of a long time, sometimes under different names for hundreds of years,” he said.

India and Pakistan became free of British rule in 1947, less than 80 years ago.

Trump said that he warned the two nations that they were going to end up in a nuclear war and said he was not going to make a trade deal with either country.

“But I said, ‘What’s going on?’ I said, ‘I don’t want to make a trade deal….’ I said, ‘No, no, I don’t want to make a trade deal with you. You are going to have a nuclear war. You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war’. And that was very important to them. I said, ‘Call me back tomorrow, but we are not going to do any deals with you, or we are going to put tariffs on you that are so high. I don’t give a damn. Your head’s going to spin. You are not going to end up in a war’. Within about five hours, it was done. Now, maybe it starts again, I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I will stop it if it does. We can’t let these things happen,” Trump claimed.

India has consistently denied any third-party role in the ceasefire.

This time, Trump said that seven jets or “more” were shot down. In June, he had said that about “five jets” were shot down. Pakistan had claimed that it downed five Indian planes in air-to-air combat after India launched Operation Sindoor.

“I saw they were fighting, then I saw seven jets were shot down. I said, ‘That’s not good.’ That’s a lot of jets. You know, $ 150 million planes were shot down. A lot of them. Seven, maybe more than that. They didn’t even report the real number,” Trump said.

A day ago, on August 25, in a talk with South Korea’s president Lee Jae Myung, Trump said, “I have stopped all of these wars. A big one would have been India and Pakistan…”

He debuted the “seven jets” claim at the meeting.

“The war with India and Pakistan was the next level that was going to be a nuclear war…They already shot down seven jets – that was raging. I said, ‘You want to trade? We are not doing any trade or anything with you if you keep fighting, you have got 24 hours to settle it’. They said, ‘Well, there’s no more war going on.’ I used that on numerous occasions. I used trade and whatever I had to use…”