31 July 2025: United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday reiterated that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India are his “good friends” but imposed a 25% tariff on goods from India, and an additional import tax because India is purchasing Russian oil.
India “is our friend,” Donald Trump said on his Truth Social platform announcing the taxes, but its tariffs on US products “are far too high”.
Donald Trump further said India buys military equipment and oil from Russia, enabling Moscow’s war in Ukraine. As a result, he intends to charge an additional “penalty” starting on Friday as part of the launch of his administration’s revised tariffs on multiple countries.
Trump told reporters on Wednesday the two countries were still in the middle of negotiations on trade despite the tariffs slated to begin in a few days.
“We are talking to India now,” the US president said, adding that “we will see what happens”.
Trump also referred to the BRICS grouping and the “tremendous” trade deficit with New Delhi for announcing the 25 per cent tariff.
“Well, we are negotiating right now, and it’s also BRICS. You know, they have BRICS, which is basically a group of countries that are anti-US, and India is a member of that… It is an attack on the dollar, and we are not going to let anybody attack the dollar,” Trump said in the White House.
The surprise announcement came a day after Indian officials said that a US trade team would visit from August 25 to negotiate a trade deal.
“So it is partially BRICS, and it is partially, it is partially the trade situation, it’s a deficit. We have a tremendous deficit. So as you know, Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi is a friend of mine, but they don’t do very much business in terms of business with us,” Trump said.
He was responding to a question about the additional penalty that would be imposed on India.
“They sell a lot to us, but we don’t buy from them. You know why? Because the tariff is so high, they have one of the highest tariffs in the world. Now, they’re willing to cut it very substantially. But we’ll see what happens,” he said.
“We are talking to India now, we will see what happens. It doesn’t matter too much whether we have a deal or whether we charge them a certain tariff, but you will know at the end of this week,” Trump said, referring to the August 1 deadline on tariffs.
India and the US have been engaged in negotiations on concluding a “fair, balanced and mutually beneficial” bilateral trade agreement over the last few months, and India remains committed to that objective, the Indian government said in a statement.
Summary:
Donald Trump praised PM Modi as a friend but criticized India’s 25% tariffs on US products, calling the trade relationship unfair and demanding more balanced terms.