Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has asserted that India must respond confidently to U.S. President Donald Trump's efforts to renegotiate trade tariffs, stating, "We are more than capable of negotiating a decent deal." Speaking at an interactive session at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University on April 21, Gandhi emphasized India's strength and potential in the global economic landscape.
In a video shared later by the institute and posted on Gandhi’s Facebook, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said, “India has the scale and the skill. What we need now is a clear vision — to build, to lead, and to show the world that democracy and manufacturing must go hand-in-hand to power the future. Time to move from potential to direction.”
Gandhi outlined the pressing need for India to establish a robust production system to compete with China and create employment. “India is not going to be able to do that without a liberalised economic system,” he said. “Anybody who talks about social progress and weakening caste structures also has to accept that you need money to do that. And the only way you are going to make money is by having a production system and an open liberalised economy.”
Commenting on the Indian government's silence regarding Trump’s tariff proposals, Gandhi remarked, “We don’t know how it is responding because they [the government] don’t tell us these things.” Nonetheless, he acknowledged Trump's negotiating stance: “Donald Trump is negotiating, and he is well within his rights to negotiate. We should negotiate right back.”
Gandhi stressed the need for India to stay firm in areas of national interest: “We should understand what our strengths are, what we need, and we should not compromise in areas that are detrimental to us. He [Trump] is well within his rights to say that he wants to change the tariff structure... it’s a negotiation; it’s fine. I think we are more than capable enough to negotiate ourselves a decent deal.”
He concluded by underlining the value of a democratic economic partnership between the two nations: “A partnership between India and the US on manufacturing and developing a strategy on manufacturing in a democratic environment is something that could be very powerful.”
