New Delhi: The Congress on Sunday alleged that the Modi government had hurriedly announced the “one-sided” Indo-US interim trade deal as a distraction strategy after Rahul Gandhi raised the issue of external security in Parliament and demanded that the framework agreement be kept in “cold storage” due to the “confusion” created by the US Supreme Court’s verdict striking down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.
The terms of the framework for the interim agreement must be renegotiated to protect farmers’ interests, and the clause talking about import liberalisation, especially of agricultural products, must be scrapped, Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh said, adding that India would have been in a much stronger position had the government waited for the Supreme Court’s verdict and not acted in haste.
Ramesh said an agreement is about give and take, but India had only given under the interim trade pact.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi had given a slogan in Houston in 2019 -’Abki baar Trump Sarkaar’ but this framework for an interim agreement is proof of ‘Abki baar Trump se haar’,” the Congress leader told the news agency.
Sharing a screenshot of the US Supreme Court calendar on X, Ramesh said, “This is the calendar the US Supreme Court decided and released months in advance. It clearly marks out February 20th as a non-argument day - i.e., a day when arguments will not be heard and a judgment could be released.”
The Court had already heard arguments relating to tariffs on November 5th 2025, and it was well known that the Justices were not expected to be favourably inclined to President Trump’s tariffs, Ramesh said.
Why then did India not wait until February 20th to sign the trade deal, he asked.
“What was the desperation to do so on February 2nd, 2026?” Ramesh said.
“Had the Prime Minister not felt the need to distract the media, the Parliament, and the people by announcing this trade deal and compromising the interests of millions of our farmers, India would have been in a much stronger bargaining position right now,” he said.