Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Tuesday hit back at Donald Trump aide Peter Navarro over his recent remarks against India over tariffs, saying that there was no need for such language when the two countries were getting closer.
Peter Navarro, White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, has made wild remarks on India recently, calling the country “maharaja of tariffs”, “laundromat of Russia” and the Ukraine conflict as “Modi’s war”. Navarro also said “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people.”
Asked over his take on Trump’s levies and Peter Navarro’s remarks, Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor said in an ANI news agency interview that the unfairness of imposition of tariffs “has definitely created a very strong backlash in India, and the accompanying insults, both by Trump’s own language in his statements and tweets”.
“Subsequently, the extremely offensive statements by his advisor (Peter) Navarro have gotten a backlash across the country. If there’s no particular problem in a relationship of 30 years, which has been getting toward greater closeness, why would you use this kind of language about India? This was not at all appreciated,” the Congress MP said.
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Listing things that went wrong, Shashi Tharoor said Donald Trump thinks of tariffs as “magic instruments” that could solve multiple problems such as reducing the deficit in his country and furthering his political agenda.
“The US president intends to make imported items more expensive by levying tariffs to push the American manufacturers to start doing things in America,” Shashi Tharoor said in the news agency interview.
“What went wrong to begin with is that Trump has this idea that tariffs are the magic instruments to solve a number of his problems. He feels that too many things that were manufactured in America are now being imported. He wants to make that more expensive so that the American manufacturer will start doing things more in America and employ American workers, who are his base [the MEGA constituency, as it is called],” the Congress MP said.
Donald Trump in August imposed 25 per cent tariff on Indian imports going to the US and later announced an additional 25 per cent duty as “penalty” for India’s Russian oil purchases.
