{"id":7592,"date":"2025-05-17T09:05:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T09:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=7592"},"modified":"2025-05-17T09:05:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T09:05:41","slug":"trump-praises-pakistanis-as-brilliant-touts-trade-as-peace-tool-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/?p=7592","title":{"rendered":"Trump praises Pakistanis as ‘brilliant’, touts trade as peace tool again"},"content":{"rendered":"
United States President Donald Trump has described Pakistanis as \u201cbrilliant people\u201d and expressed a strong desire to expand bilateral trade, while claiming credit for averting what he called a near-nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India.<\/p>\n

Speaking in an interview with Fox News, Trump said his intervention helped bring the two nuclear-armed neighbours back from the brink of war following a period of intense military escalation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was going to be a nuclear war, I think, or close\u2026 And now everyone\u2019s happy,\u201d Trump said, referring to tensions between the South Asian rivals. \u201cMissiles were being fired, retaliation was underway, and both sides were escalating rapidly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump credited his administration\u2019s behind-the-scenes diplomacy for halting the crisis and said that engaging both sides through trade was part of his peace-building strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI told my people, call them up\u2014let\u2019s start trading immediately,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DJvpnOCsnwP\/<\/p>\n

The president said he had “great conversations” with Pakistani leadership, expressing optimism about future cooperation. \u201cThey would love to trade. They are brilliant people and make incredible products. We don\u2019t do much trading with them,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n

He noted that despite positive relations, trade between the US and Pakistan remains limited. \u201cWe can\u2019t forget them because it does take two rectangle,\u201d he added, in what appeared to be a slip of the tongue while attempting to stress the importance of cooperation.<\/p>\n

Trump used the opportunity to criticise India\u2019s economic policies, calling it \u201cthe country with the highest tariffs in the world.\u201d However, he acknowledged that India had shown readiness to reduce tariffs in its trade dealings with Washington.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndia\u2026 they make it almost impossible to do business,\u201d Trump said. \u201cDo you know that they\u2019re willing to cut 100% of their tariffs for the United States?\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump went on to characterise his diplomatic efforts as one of the most significant achievements of his presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cA bigger success than I\u2019ll ever be given credit for,\u201d he said. \u201cThose are major nuclear powers. Those are not just little powers and they were angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting on the danger of the standoff, Trump described the escalation as dangerously close to a nuclear exchange.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was tit for tat. It was getting deeper \u2013 more missiles. Everyone was saying \u2018stronger, stronger,\u2019 to a point where the next one\u2019s going to be, you know what? The N word,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the N word. That\u2019s a very nasty word, right? In a lot of ways. The N word used in a nuclear sense\u2014that\u2019s the worst thing that can happen,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd I think they were very close. The hatred was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump framed the episode as a case where diplomacy, combined with economic engagement, prevented a global catastrophe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m using trade to settle scores and to make peace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Concluding the interview, Trump portrayed himself as a president who delivers results. \u201cWe worked not only for world peace, but also for economic progress,\u201d he said. \u201cTrade is a tool for peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest escalation between Pakistan and India began on April 22, when an attack in the IIOJK resort town of Pahalgam killed 26 people. India immediately blamed Pakistan for the incident, despite providing no public evidence.<\/p>\n

In response, India undertook a series of hostile actions the next day on April 23, including suspending the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), cancelling visas for Pakistani citizens, closing the Wagah-Attari border crossing, ordering the shutdown of the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, and reducing diplomatic staff at each other’s embassies.<\/p>\n

Pakistan strongly rejected the accusation, calling it unsubstantiated, but took reciprocal measures through its National Security Committee (NSC). These included halting trade with India, closing Pakistani airspace to Indian aircraft, and other countersteps.<\/p>\n

Tensions further escalated in the early hours of May 7, when missile strikes hit six cities in Punjab and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), destroying a mosque and killing dozens of civilians, including women, children, and the elderly.<\/p>\n

In a swift military response, Pakistan\u2019s armed forces shot down Indian warplanes, including three Rafale jets, widely regarded as a key asset of the Indian Air Force. Over the following two days, India launched waves of Israeli-made drones, which were also neutralised by Pakistan’s military.<\/p>\n

The confrontation intensified again in the early hours of May 10, when India targeted several Pakistani airbases with missile strikes. In retaliation, Pakistan launched Operation Bunyan-un-Marsoos, damaging Indian military installations, including missile storage sites, airbases, and other strategic targets.<\/p>\n

By Saturday evening, US President Donald Trump announced that a ceasefire had been reached following intense diplomatic efforts overnight. Minutes later, the agreement was confirmed separately by Pakistan\u2019s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and the Indian foreign secretary.<\/p>\n

But despite the military ceasefire the war of narratives has waged on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Pakistan publicly credited US\u00a0President Donald Trump \u2014 along with China and Gulf states \u2014 for playing a vital role in defusing tensions, India downplayed foreign involvement.<\/p>\n

Indian officials insisted the truce was the result of direct bilateral talks, with Foreign Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal clarifying that trade was never part of discussions with US\u00a0officials.<\/p>\n

Trump, however, reiterated at the US-Saudi Investment Forum that his administration had brokered the ceasefire using trade as leverage. \u201cLet\u2019s not trade nuclear missiles, let\u2019s trade the things you make so beautifully,\u201d he said, casting himself as the key peacemaker between the nuclear-armed rivals.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

United States President Donald Trump has described Pakistanis as \u201cbrilliant people\u201d and expressed a strong desire to expand bilateral trade, while claiming credit for averting what he called a near-nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India. Speaking in an interview with Fox News, Trump said his intervention helped bring the two nuclear-armed neighbours back from the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipp-news.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}