While this is not the first time that Trump has made comments targeting India, Delhi has been restrained in its response. On Tuesday, Trump said Modi is “not that happy with me” because of the tariffs Washington imposed on Delhi over its purchase of Russian oil — the 25 per cent penalty took the tariffs on India to 50 per cent.
Trump also said India told him it has been waiting five years for the Apache helicopters. “We are changing it… India ordered 68 Apaches,” he said.
In Delhi, government sources contradicted the claim, saying India has only bought 28 Apache helicopters from the US — 22 for the IAF, 6 for the Indian Army. And that all these helicopters had been delivered.
The first deal of 22 Apache helicopters was signed during the Obama administration in September 2015, and were delivered during the Trump administration’s first term.
The second deal of 6 Apache helicopters, signed during Trump’s visit to India in February 2020, faced delays and were delivered by December 2025, and not January-February 2024. In fact, the delivery of the helicopters was part of the discussions during Modi’s visit to the White House in February 2025.
While there is growing political pressure to respond sharply to Trump’s comments, the diplomatic establishment has counselled against such statements, calling for restraint and political maturity. Sources said such responses are often “counter-productive” and there is “no point in scoring points”, especially when the India-US trade deal is still in the works.
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“There is no need for a ball-by-ball commentary on what the US President has been saying. Instead we should be focussed on our trade negotiations and that is our priority,” a source told The Indian Express.
Trump made similar comments in August 2025 when he claimed to have told Modi that the US was “not going to do any deals with you”, or “we are going to put tariffs on you that are so high, your head’s going to spin”.
At that time, after the US imposed 50 per cent tariffs, Trump said, “I am talking to a very terrific man, Narendra Modi. I said, ‘What’s going on with you and Pakistan?’ The hatred was tremendous. This has been going on for a hell of a long time, like, sometimes with different names for hundreds of years… I said, I don’t want to make a trade deal with you… You guys are going to end up in a nuclear war… I said, call me back tomorrow. But we are not going to do any deals with you, or we are going to put tariffs on you that are so high, your head’s going to spin…Within five hours, it was done. Maybe it starts again, but I will stop it if it does.”
In recent months, Delhi has fact-checked the US President but it has not stopped him from claiming credit for ending the India-Pakistan conflict in May 2025.
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In Luxembourg Wednesday, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, while interacting with members of the Indian community there, said countries that are miles away say they get worried if there is tension, but refuse to look inward, what risks lie in their own region.
“So those who are willing to work with us and be helpful, positive, we have to deal with them in that way. Those who do the kind of things which Pakistan does, we have to deal with it in a different way,” Jaishankar said.
“Now, to what extent do the developments in the rest of the world affect it? It’s hard to say. People sitting far away will say things, sometimes with application of mind, sometimes not, sometimes with self-interest, sometimes carelessly. That will happen. But at the end of the day, I can tell you, whatever you might say, in this day and age, countries are more, I don’t want to say they become more selfish, but they will do things only if it is of direct benefit to them. They will offer you free advice. If something happens, say no, please don’t do that. It worries us if there is tension,” he said.
He recalled that during Operation Sindoor, several countries advised India on how it should conduct itself, and India accepted it as the way of the world and moved on.
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“Sometimes you hear people say, like it happened during Operation Sindoor. Now if you ask them, say, oh really you are worried, why don’t you look at your own region? And ask yourself, what are the levels of violence there, how many risks have been taken, how much worry the rest of us have about what you are doing. But that’s the nature of the world. People, what they say is not what they do. And we have to accept it in that spirit as well,” he said.
