Congress slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union government after US President Donald Trump raised tariffs on imports from India by 50 per cent and charged it reflected "abysmal failure" of foreign policy under the current regime.
The opposition pinned the blame on the prime minister and said the tariff hike reflects the failure of Modi's "huglomacy". Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, highlighting the headline-grabbing events hosted by the Modi-Trump duo in the US and India, charged the prime minister should take inspiration from Indira Gandhi and stand up to the US's tariff threats.
US President Trump raised tariffs on Indian imports to 50 per cent on Wednesday. The hiked tariff rates comes after the US president announced that an additional penalty will be imposed on India for purchasing Russian oil and defence equipment.
"Mr Modi wooed Elon Musk and his family as well, at a time when Mr Musk was very close to President Trump. The wooing of Mr Musk was part of Mr. Modi's strategy to please President Trump. Mr Modi has time and again flaunted his supposedly close friendship with President Trump," Ramesh said.
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"Prime Minister Modi has kept completely quiet even as President Trump has claimed 33 times that he intervened to bring about a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. There was total silence from the PM and his close circle when President Trump hosted Pakistan's chief of army staff Field Marshal Asim Munir to lunch on June 18, 2025, at the White House. This was the same person whose inflammatory and communally poisonous remarks had provided the backdrop to the Pahalgam terror attacks on April 22, 2025," the Congress leader charged.
The Rajya Sabha MP charged that Modi and the Centre remained silent when Trump destroyed the WTO and withdrew from key international programmes, including the Paris Climate Accord. "India has remained a mute onlooker," he said.
"Now, President Trump, while still claiming to be a friend of Mr Modi, has hit India hard and unjustly. While his tariff and penalty actions are simply unacceptable, the fact remains that they also reflect the abysmal failure of Mr Modi's personalised and headline-grabbing style of huglomacy," he added. "India has stood up to the bullying of the US in the 1970s, especially under the Prime Ministership of Smt Indira Gandhi."