A tense phone call in June between US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi created a rift between the two countries, culminating in steep new US tariffs on Indian goods, according to Bloomberg.
The 35-minute call on June 17 followed a four-day fighting between India and Pakistan in May that ended with a ceasefire announced by Trump, who has since then claimed he brokered the truce, warning that his intervention had averted a "nuclear war."
During the conversation, Bloomberg reported, Modi told Trump that the two nations directly discussed a ceasefire, claiming Pakistan requested it.
Islamabad claims battlefield dominance and credits Trump with brokering the truce, nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
"Modi felt like he needed to set the record straight in the call after his aides discovered that Trump planned to host a lunch the following day at the White House for Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir," the report said, citing anonymous officials in New Delhi familiar with the matter.
"Wary that Trump would look to orchestrate a meeting between Munir and Modi, the Indian leader turned down an invitation to stop by the White House on the way back from Canada," the sources told Bloomberg.
Following the phone call, the report said, officials in New Delhi noted a change in tone from the White House.
"Once Trump began publicly attacking India, they added, it was clear the episode marked a turning point in the broader relationship."
Trump began publicly attacking India's trade policies and announced a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports, saying half was a penalty for its purchases of Russian oil and weapons.
The tariffs threaten decades of US policy aimed at preparing India as a counterweight to China.
Trump has since then called India's economy "dead," its trade barriers "obnoxious" and accused New Delhi of bankrolling Russia's war in Ukraine.
'Five or six planes got shot down'
On Friday, Trump once again asserted that hostilities between Pakistan and India were settled after he brokered the truce between the South Asian nuclear rivals, saying he urged the two countries to focus on trade instead of war.
"Through trade I got things settled with India, Pakistan. I think it was trade more than any other reason. That's how I got involved," Trump told reporters on Friday during a trilateral summit at the White House involving Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The summit culminated in the signing of a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, who asserted that Trump's mediation should earn him a Nobel Peace Prize — an award the US leader has been vocal about seeking.
"I said, you know, I don't want to be dealing with countries that are trying to blow up themselves and maybe the world, you know, they're nuclear nations," Trump said, referring to his calls to Indian and Pakistani leadership in May.
Trump stated that resolving the Pakistan-India conflict "was a big one" because it could have quickly escalated into a nuclear war.
"That was a big one, getting that one settled, I think you'd agree that was a big one and they were going at it, you know, they were shooting airplanes out of the sky. You know, they five or six planes got shot down in the last little skirmish and then it was going to escalate from there and they could have gotten to be very, very bad."
