Washington: US President Donald Trump on Monday (local time) reiterated his claim of having “settled eight wars” over the past eight months, asserting that five of them were resolved through “the power of tariffs and trade.”
Speaking at the Oval Office alongside Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — where the two leaders signed a multi-billion-dollar pact on critical minerals and defence cooperation — Trump said he has “one more war to go,” referring to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
“I have settled eight wars in eight months. Not bad. I have one more to go — it’s Russia-Ukraine, and I think we’ll get there. But it’s turned out to be nasty because you have two leaders that truly hate each other,” Trump said.
Emphasising his approach, Trump added, “We’ve become a nation that uses the power of tariffs and trade to settle disputes. Five of the eight wars I ended were resolved that way. I don’t think there’s ever been an American President who settled even one.”
When asked about Ukraine’s chances of victory in its war against Russia, Trump responded cautiously: “They could still win it. I don’t think they will, but they could. I never said they would win — I said they could. Anything can happen; war is a very strange thing.”
Trump had made similar remarks a day earlier during an interview with Fox News, claiming that his administration averted a potential war between India and Pakistan by leveraging trade pressure and the threat of heavy tariffs.
He alleged that “seven planes were shot down” during heightened tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in May and described the situation as being “on the brink of a nuclear war.”
“I’ve ended eight wars. Five of them were ended through tariffs — or the threat of tariffs,” Trump said. “The threat of tariffs, for example, kept India and Pakistan — two nuclear nations — from going at it. They were going at it; seven planes were shot down. That could have been a nuclear war.”
Trump’s remarks referred to the escalation in May following India’s Operation Sindoor — a series of precision strikes on nine terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 civilians.
India, however, has rejected Trump’s claims, reaffirming that all issues with Pakistan, including those related to Jammu and Kashmir, are to be resolved bilaterally without third-party mediation.
