Congress General Secretary Jairam Ramesh Says PM Focused On ‘Tareef’ not Tariffs, Must Stand Up To US Threats

PM Narendra Modi is only interested in Tareef and not concentrated with Tariffis, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said on Friday and wondered where is the PM’s 56-inch chest is in dealing with US threats on the reciprocal tariff matter. 

Ramesh said the Congress will raise the issue of US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff threats during the upcoming second half of the Budget session and called for a bipartisan collective resolve to deal with the pressure.

The Congress leader has pointed out that External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has been speaking like an American envoy. Ramesh said that our PM wants to hear only praise. He is not much concerned about tariffs. ‘Tareef kum, aur tariff pe baat kijiye (talk about the tariffs issue and less about your praise),”

He said Trump is redoing the entire rules of international trade and asserted that the US President’s whole idea of reciprocal tariffs is “bizarre”. Ramesh added “We have negotiated a tariff schedule. About 170 countries have negotiated a trade agreement which became the World Trade Organisation in 1995. It took about 10 years to negotiate. Now, Mr Trump comes up with his own bizarre notion of what constitutes international trade,”

Ramesh recalled “He should speak frankly…Trump is threatening a country like India. The prime minister talks about having a ’56-inch chest’, where is his ’56-inch chest’ now. Remember what Indira Gandhi told President (Richard) Nixon in November 1971?