‘India is consistently being insulted by the Trump administration’: Opposition slams Modi govt over US tariffs

The controversy escalated after US announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on goods imported from India. File pic.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and Rajya Sabha MP P. Sandosh Kumar launched a sharp attack on the Narendra Modi-led government, accusing it of failing to respond adequately to repeated provocations by US President Donald Trump, who he said continues to "belittle" India, reported ANI.

During an interaction with ANI, Kumar alleged that India is consistently being insulted by the Trump administration, and criticised the Indian leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for not taking a firm stand in response.

"I feel that Trump's second term means belittling India all the time. Our country's leadership - from the Prime Minister to his ministers - has no person with the capacity. We should retaliate and give an answer. The country's Prime Minister has the fourth-largest following on 'X'. After what happened in Pahalgam, there was an India-Pakistan war situation. After that, Trump said something. He has not yet responded. The world feels this, other countries feel this, that our leadership is very weak," the CPI(M) MP said, reported ANI.

"The country's interest is the highest. Therefore, there should be retaliation, there should be discussion," he added.

Meanwhile, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor also criticised the United States, accusing it of applying a "double standard" by imposing a 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods over Russian oil imports. Tharoor argued that the move would hurt Indian exports and make them less competitive in the US market.

Tharoor highlighted the contrasting treatment of China, which imports more Russian oil than India but was granted a 90-day waiver from the US tariffs, calling it an unfair trade practice, reported ANI.

In a similar vein, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi denounced the US tariff hike as an act of "economic blackmail," saying it was an attempt to pressure India into accepting an unjust trade agreement.

As reported by ANI, the controversy escalated after US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on August 6, announcing an additional 25 per cent tariff on goods imported from India. Trump justified the action by citing national security and foreign policy concerns, claiming that India's continued imports of Russian oil posed a threat to the US.

In response, India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) condemned the new US tariffs, calling them "unfair, unjustified and unreasonable." The ministry added that India would take "all actions necessary to protect its national interests," reported ANI.

Adding to the ongoing tensions, a senior official from the US administration told ANI that the scale of India's oil trade with Russia dwarfs the US's limited imports from Russia, asserting that the two situations were not comparable.

"There is simply no comparison between the hundreds of billions of dollars of growing Indian imports of Russian oil, and the modest U.S. imports of Russian goods, which amount to less than 1% of the value of Indian imports", the US official told ANI.

(Inputs from ANI)