Trump's trade offer led to India-Pakistan ceasefire
The US government has claimed in an official court submission that the ceasefire between India and Pakistan was agreed after President Donald Trump intervened and offered both countries 'access to the American market.'
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told the US Court of International Trade last week that the ceasefire 'was only achieved after President Trump interceded and offered both nations trading access with the United States to avert a full-scale war.' Lutnick also argued that narrowing the president's emergency tariff powers would weaken US global influence and threaten the fragile India-Pakistan truce.
Lutnick was referring to the ceasefire announced by New Delhi and Islamabad on May 10, after a four-day military standoff between the two nuclear powers. India launched a military operation, codenamed Sindoor, on May 7, targeting nine cites in Pakistan which it referred to as 'terrorist camps.' The move was in response to a terrorist attack in Pahalgam in India's Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory in late April that killed 26 tourists, New Delhi maintained. Islamabad has denied any involvement in the Pahalgam attack.
Trump was the first to announce the ceasefire in a social media post. He later claimed on several occasions that he had intervened at a critical moment in the standoff and had told both countries: 'I was 'gonna do a lot of trade with you, let's stop it.'
Immediately after Trump's comments, Indian Foreign Ministry sources dismissed claims that the US had threatened to reduce trade as a means of brokering a ceasefire. Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri recently told a parliamentary committee that the US was 'neither involved nor informed' about the ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar in a series of interviews with European media outlets this week rejected the role of Trump in reaching ceasefire. 'The cessation of firing was agreed between the military commanders of both sides through direct contact,' he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Lutnick's court statement came amid efforts to negotiate a bilateral trade deal between India and the US. Indian Foreign Secretary Misri is currently in Washington for high-level talks on finalizing the trade pact before the deadline announced by Trump. The US in April imposed an additional 26% reciprocal tariff on Indian goods, but suspended it for 90 days until July 9, keeping the baseline 10% tariff in place.
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