Lutnick on trade spat: India ‘will say sorry in 2 months’

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Friday India will likely resume trade negotiations with the United States in two months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi began leveraging his relationship with Russia and China due to the onset of new tariffs from President Trump.

“I think, yes, in a month or two months, I think India’s going to be at the table, and they’re going to say they’re sorry, and they’re going to try to make a deal with Donald Trump,” Lutnick said during a Friday appearance on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

“And it will be on Donald Trump’s desk, how he wants to deal with Modi. And we leave that to him. That’s why he’s the president,” he added. 

Earlier this week, Modi met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Tianjin, China, to plan their collective response to new levies.

The meeting clearly annoyed Trump, who has repeatedly criticized it. On Friday, Trump posted his criticism on Truth Social, writing, “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together!”

Tariffs on Indian imports stand at 50 percent, marking a 25 percent rise that Trump said he imposed because of India’s purchases of Russian oil. 

Modi has not indicated he plans to change his nation’s policies to appease Trump.

“We should become self-reliant — not out of desperation, but out of pride,” Modi told citizens in late August, promising to cut taxes in preparation for economic hits from U.S. tariffs. 

“Economic selfishness is on the rise globally and we mustn’t sit and cry about our difficulties, we must rise above and not allow others to hold us in their clutches,” he added.

Trump has repeatedly criticized a trade imbalance between India and the U.S. while promising to even the scales.

“What few people understand is that we do very little business with India, but they do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods, their biggest ‘client,’ but we sell them very little – Until now a totally one sided relationship, and it has been for many decades,” Trump wrote in his post Monday morning.

“The reason is that India has charged us, until now, such high Tariffs, the most of any country, that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been a totally one sided disaster!” he continued. “Also, India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the U.S.”