
PM Modi unable to reject Trump's claims as US president will ‘lay bare the truth': Rahul Gandhi
Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, the leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha said: 'The prime minister has not said that Trump is lying. It is obvious what has happened. Everyone knows, he is not able to say it. That is the reality.'
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he helped India and Pakistan settle the border tensions in May. The US president has also claimed that he pressured both countries into accepting the ceasefire by threatening to stop trade with them.
New Delhi has rejected Trump's assertions.
Gandhi said on Wednesday that Trump was repeating his claims to pressure New Delhi on a trade deal that is in the works.
'Just watch how the trade deal turns out,' he added.
On Tuesday, speaking during a debate on the Pahalgam terror attack and the subsequent Operation Sindoor, Gandhi asked the prime minister to ' show courage ' and clarify if Trump was lying about mediating the ceasefire deal.
'Donald Trump has said 29 times that he brought about the ceasefire,' Gandhi said. 'If he is lying… let the prime minister say he is lying. If he has the courage of Indira Gandhi, let him say here that Donald Trump is a liar.'
Modi told the Lok Sabha later that no country told India to halt its military operation against terror bases in Pakistan.
A day earlier, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar told Parliament that there was no call between Modi and Trump during the Indian military strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
#WATCH | Delhi: On US President Donald Trump's statement on ceasefire and tariffs, Lok Sabha LoP and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, "It is obvious, Prime Minister has not said that Trump is lying. Everyone knows that he is not able to speak. That is the reality. If PM Modi… pic.twitter.com/8eckHqb6OJ
— ANI (@ANI) July 30, 2025
The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.
The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. At least 22 Indian civilians and eight defence personnel were killed.
India and Pakistan on May 10 reached an 'understanding' to halt firing following the four-day conflict.
On Tuesday, Trump said that the trade deal with India had not been finalised and New Delhi could be hit with a tariff rate of 20% to 25%.
Trump added that the final rate of levy had also not been finalised as India and the US were negotiating the agreement ahead of the August 1 deadline.
The US president made the comments while responding to reporters' questions about the so-called reciprocal tariffs Washington plans to reimpose on dozens of countries that have not negotiated separate trade agreements with the US by August 1.
Trump announced higher levies in April, before pausing those tariffs at a reduced 10% rate to allow time for negotiations. Despite an extended deadline, he has only secured a handful of deals.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Indian Express
14 minutes ago
- Indian Express
Trump's surprise 25%+ tariff could pull down India's GDP growth below 6%
The Indian economy could end up growing up by less than 6 per cent in the current fiscal if US President Donald Trump's surprise tariff of at least 25 per cent on Indian goods remains in place for the rest of the year, with most economists predicting a hit of 20-40 basis points (bps) to the growth rate. According to ANZ economists Dhiraj Nim and Sanjay Mathaur, if the US' 25 per cent tariff on India remains in place for the remainder of 2025-26, 'it could subtract 40 bps from GDP growth', although the duo added that the impact could be lower as India's rivals are also facing higher tariffs than before. ANZ currently expects India's GDP to expand by 6.1 per cent in the current fiscal, lower than the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) forecast of 6.5 per cent and the finance ministry's 6.3-6.8 per cent projection range. Late Wednesday, Trump said that starting August 1, Indian goods would face a 25 per cent tariff when being imported into the US as well as an additional but unspecified 'penalty' for purchasing energy and defence equipment from Russia. In a post on social media platform Truth Social, Trump said India has 'the most strenuous and obnoxious non-monetary Trade Barriers of any Country'. The Indian government, on its part, responded by saying that it's studying the implications of Trump's statement and remains committed to arriving at a 'fair, balanced and mutually beneficial' trade agreement. Early Thursday, Trump said on Truth Social that he didn't 'care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care'. Slowing growth After clocking an unexpectedly high GDP growth rate of 7.4 per cent in the final quarter of 2024-25, the Indian economy is widely expected to have slowed down in April-June, with the RBI itself having predicted in June that growth would slow down to 6.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2025-26. The statistics ministry will release GDP data for April-June at the end of August. Economists have widely been of the opinion that the RBI's forecast of 6.5 per cent for 2025-26 is a tad optimistic, with the Indian central bank aggressively cutting interest rates over the last few minutes to support economic activity in the face of multi-year low inflation. Trump's tariff shock, however, puts a spanner in the works. 'At these tariff rates, if the burden of higher tariffs is equally split between Indian producers and US consumers, it could directly shave off 0.3 ppt (percentage points) from India's GDP growth,' HSBC economists Pranjul Bhandari and Aayushi Chaudhary, who currently forecast a growth rate of 6.3 per cent for 2025-26, said in a note on Thursday. 'The penalty rate, if levied, would shave off further from growth, and there could be an indirect growth drag as well, led by lower capital inflows, investment, and suchlike,' they added. One percentage point is equal to 100 bps. A hit of 30 bps to this year's growth rate was echoed by Barclays, while Nomura economists estimated a slightly lower impact of 20 bps from their current forecast of 6.2 per cent. The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is set to meet next week to decide on interest rates. So far in 2025, the rate-setting panel has reduced the policy repo rate by 100 bps to 5.5 per cent, although it signalled in June that it had little room left to support growth further. Since then, headline retail inflation – which is the RBI's legally-mandated target – has slumped, coming in at just 2.1 per cent in June, only marginally higher than the lower bound of the central bank's target range of 2-6 per cent. As such, markets are increasingly of the opinion that the MPC may be able to further cut interest rates in the coming months. Export impact To be sure, the US is India's largest trade partner and was the destination of around 18 per cent of its goods exports. However, the Indian economy is 'relatively more domestically oriented than most of the region and relies far less on trade', Aditi Raman, Associate Economist at Moody's Analytics, said. According to Emkay Global Financial Services, India's exports to the US could fall by $30 billion-$33 billion at tariff levels of above 25 per cent. This estimate does not account for any cross-country responses. In 2024, total goods trade between India and the US stood at $129.2 billion. While the US' exports to India in the last calendar year rose 3.4 per cent from 2023 to $41.8 billion, its imports from India increased by 4.5 per cent to $87.4 billion, resulting in a goods trade deficit of $45.7 billion. India primarily exports electronics, gems and jewellery, pharma products, machinery, textiles, and refined petroleum products to the US. Siddharth Upasani is a Deputy Associate Editor with The Indian Express. He reports primarily on data and the economy, looking for trends and changes in the former which paint a picture of the latter. Before The Indian Express, he worked at Moneycontrol and financial newswire Informist (previously called Cogencis). Outside of work, sports, fantasy football, and graphic novels keep him busy. ... Read More


Mint
16 minutes ago
- Mint
Trump and Dimon are talking again after yearslong rift
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon visited the White House twice in the past two months, a sign of detente after years of tension between the head of America's biggest bank and President Trump. Last week, Dimon met with Trump in the Oval Office to discuss the economy, trade and financial regulation, people familiar with the matter said. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick were also in attendance, the people said. At the meeting, Dimon congratulated Trump on his recent trade deal with Japan. They discussed the continuing shortage of affordable housing and the impact of post-2008 financial crisis regulations on American homeownership, the people said. Their conversation also broached a topic they have publicly disagreed on: interest rates. Trump has continually bashed Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell over the central bank's monetary policy and has threatened to remove him. Dimon has been steadfast in his support of Powell and the Fed's independence more broadly, adding that political attempts to force interest rates lower often have the opposite effect. In last week's meeting, Dimon told the president that interest rates could come down if the economy is sufficiently strong, a person familiar with the matter said. That message echoes what Bessent told Trump as he tried to make his case for not firing Powell, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Later in the week, Trump toured a construction project at the Fed that has become a point of contention for the president's supporters against Powell. He said then he wasn't planning to remove Powell, though Trump reiterated he would like rates lowered. On Wednesday, he again echoed calls for rates to go down, citing better-than-expected economic data. The Fed on Wednesday stood pat again on interest rates, although two Trump-appointed governors dissented from the 12-person committee's decision. In June, Dimon had another meeting with Trump and other officials including Vice President JD Vance, the people said. Before the summer meetings, Dimon and Trump hadn't had a substantive conversation for years, the Journal reported. They had also lobbed rounds of public insults at each other over the years. In the first administration, Dimon was among the CEOs who dissolved a council of leaders after Trump's comments about racial tension in Charlottesville, Va. Dimon later compared Trump's challenge of the 2020 election results to treason. In 2023, Trump called Dimon 'highly overrated" after Dimon urged business leaders to back Nikki Haley in the Republican primary. He has also accused JPMorgan of discriminating against conservatives. But there have been signs that Dimon and Trump were looking to turn the page. Dimon has often said that as the chief executive of America's biggest bank, he wants to meet with leaders no matter their political ideology to help them improve the country. He declares himself a patriot who puts country above politics and his own bank. In January, Dimon had said that the world should listen to Trump's views and that he was making the right decisions on a number of matters. He has supported some of the new tariffs on foreign trading partners, especially those that help protect national security. He also has said that immigration at the Southern border needed to be addressed and has criticized Democrats for having 'big hearts" and 'little brains." When Trump's April tariff announcements sent markets into turmoil, Dimon went on television, saying a trade war risked plunging the economy into a recession. Trump later cited Dimon's comments on the risks as a factor he considered before deciding to pause most of them on April 9. Trump has also said he respects Dimon's view on the economy and the vast banking franchise he has built. Write to Alexander Saeedy at and AnnaMaria Andriotis at


Mint
16 minutes ago
- Mint
Watch Video: Shashi Tharoor mocks US-Pak deal: ‘Illusions about finding oil in Pakistan'
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor took a witty dig at the United States on July 31, saying it has some illusions about finding oil in Member of Parliament said US President Trump's 'dead economy' remark about India was a 'very serious matter.' Tharoor's remarks to news agency PTI outside Parliament came hours after US President Donald Trump Trump announced on Truth Social that the United States has reached a deal with Pakistan to jointly develop the country's 'massive oil reserves," in what he described as a major energy partnership. "I think they may have some illusions about finding oil in Pakistan. And I wish them luck," Tharoor said. Trump said the partnership is still in the early stages, with a leading oil company yet to be selected. "We were one country at one time, and I have not seen any reports that there was any oil to be found in Pakistan. But if the Americans want to loo, let them look," Tharoor said. Tharoor also called President Trump's 'dead economy' remark a very serious matter for India "... 25, plus an unspecified penalty for our buying oil and gas from Russia, it could take it up to 35-45... There's even talk of a 100% penalty, which will destroy our trade with America,' Tharoor told news agency ANI. Targeting India's trade ties with Russia, Donald Trump on Thursday said he does not care what India does with Russia and accused both nations of having 'dead economies". 'I don't care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,' Trump said in a post on Truth Social. 'We have done very little business with India, their Tariffs are too high, among the highest in the World,' Trump said in the post. Earlier, President Donald Trump announced a 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods starting August 1, citing India's high trade barriers, and an additional 'penalty' for India's continued energy and defense ties with Russia. Donald Trump criticised India's military and oil imports from Russia, saying it has enabled Moscow to continue the war on Ukraine. Trump's 'dead economy' remark is a very serious matter for India. I think they may have some illusions about finding oil in Pakistan. And I wish them luck.