Indian officials have hit back at Howard Lutnick’s face-saving narrative about why President Donald Trump has not yet struck a trade deal with the South Asian country.
Speaking with the All-In podcast Thursday, the president’s trade secretary said that in order to finalize any trade agreements, he’d told his Indian counterparts that “you have to have [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi call the president.”
“They were uncomfortable doing it. So Modi didn’t call,” he said, claiming it was only after several weeks of deals being struck with other trading partners that New Delhi got back in touch to say, “Okay, we’re ready.”
“I said, you’re ready for what?” he went on. “You’re ready for the train that left the station three weeks ago?”
India has since struck down Lutnick’s version of events. A spokesperson for the South Asian country’s foreign ministry says the MAGA official’s narrative is “not accurate,” given Trump and Modi apparently spoke on the phone no less than eight times last year.
“India and the U.S. were committed to negotiating a bilateral trade agreement as far back as Feb. 13 last year,” Randhir Jaiswal told a press conference Friday.
“Since then both sides have held multiple rounds of negotiations to arrive at a balanced and mutually beneficial trade agreement,” he added. “On several occasions, we have been close to a deal.”
Modi visited D.C. not long after Trump’s inauguration last January to reaffirm U.S.-India ties and discuss expanding bilateral trade.
While the ensuing months may have seen joint commitments on defense sales, technology partnerships, and broader Indo-Pacific cooperation, underlying friction on economic issues escalated sharply after Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on Indian goods in August.
The MAGA leader later followed up with a punitive surcharge tied to India’s Russian oil imports, pushing total duties above 50 percent and triggering something of a diplomatic crisis as India denounced the measures.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
