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. ”
“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.”
