President Trump during a press conference at the White House, indicated he may visit India next year. He also repeated that applying tariffs on countries was a national security measure and that it was a tool he used to stop wars, reiterating his reference to India and Pakistan as an example of his success.
Trump was speaking during a press conference he held to announce a deal to lower the price of weight-loss drugs. Asked about the Supreme Court’s ongoing hearing on whether the tariffs his administration had applied on countries were legal, Trump said tariffs were akin to a national security initiative.
“I use them for national defense. I ended …. say five or six (wars) were ended because of tariffs.” He repeated the example of the recent India Pakistan conflict.
“If you take a look at India and Pakistan, they started to fight. The two nuclear nations, they were shooting each other. Eight planes were shot down. There was (sic) seven. Now it was eight, because the one that was sort of shot down is now abandoned, and eight planes were shot down. ”
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“And I said, Listen, if you guys are going to fight, I’m going to put tariffs on you. And they both …. were not happy about that, and within 24 hours they settled the war. If I didn’t have tariffs, I wouldn’t have been able to settle that war.”
Asked if he was planning to go to India, Trump said, “Prime Minister largely stopped buying oil from Russia when you plan.” The President went on to say, “He’s a friend of mine, and we speak, and he wants me to go there. We’ll figure that out. I’ll go. I had a great trip there with Prime Minister… Modi’s… great man, and I’ll be going.” Asked if he would be going there next year, Trump responded, “”It could be, Yeah.”
ADDON FROM THE WASHINGTON POST
“I do not have anything on this to share,” Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said at a briefing in New Delhi on Friday regarding Trump’s visit. “I will let you know when I have.”
During his February visit to the White House, Modi had invited Trump to India. “On behalf of 1.4 billion Indians, I invite you to come to India,” the Indian leader had said at a joint press conference in Washington during his visit. But relations between the two countries deteriorated rapidly after that.
Trump earlier this year slapped 50% tariffs on India’s exports to the US in part to pressure New Delhi to stop buying Russian oil. That added tensions to an already contentious negotiation over what the US has cast as India’s high levies and other barriers on American goods.
In recent weeks, Trump has said that Modi has pledged to wind down purchases of crude from Russia and expressed optimism about trade talks.
While some officials in New Delhi have indicated that India is close to signing a trade deal with Washington, others – including the Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal – have sent mixed signals, saying the country won’t be pressured into finalizing any agreement.
It is also unclear if the recent warmth between the two leaders will last. Despite sharing a close relationship, the alliance between Trump and Modi has been strained by the US leader’s repeated claim that he deserves credit for brokering a truce in a four-day armed conflict between India and Pakistan.
Trump’s last presidential visit to India came over five years ago, during his first term. “The people of India still remember your visit of 2020, and hope that President Trump will come to them once again,” Modi had said at the February press conference.
(Updated on November 7, 2025 with addon from The Washington Post)