Trump called Modi 4 times but PM did not answer:German newspaper

US President Donald Trump has made four attempts to speak with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the phone in the past weeks but the latter did not take the calls, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper reported, citing sources. The paper points out that earlier, Trump shocked India by imposing the country with 25% tariffs and calling it a "dead economy." "There are signs indicating that Modi felt insulted," Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes, adding that Modi’s unwillingness to hold a phone conversation with Trump demonstrates the extent to which the Indian premier was irritated by what the US president had done. The attempts by President Trump to talk to PM Modi came even as his administration hit India with 50% tariffs, the highest for any country other than Brazil. Thorsten Benner, Co-Founder and Director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, highlighted the FAZ report on X, writing, “FAZ claims that Trump tried to call Modi four times in recent weeks but that Modi refused the calls.”

FAZ claims that Trump tried to call Modi four times in recent weeks but that Modi refused the calls. pic.twitter.com/ey4qq7qqWA

— Thorsten Benner (@thorstenbenner) August 25, 2025

The Indo-US ties, cultivated over 25 years, hit a rough patch with Trump targeting India for being trade surplus. DC also imposed penalties on New Delhi for India buying crude oil from Russia.Both India and the United States had been negotiating a large-scale trade agreement since February, aiming to raise annual trade volumes to $500 billion by 2030. The deal was expected to be signed later this year, but tensions escalated when Washington raised tariffs on Indian goods by 25 to 50 per cent, citing New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian crude oil. “America’s strategy isn’t working,” said Mark Frazier, Co-Director of the India-China Institute at the New School in New York. “The American concept of an ‘Indo-Pacific’ alignment, in which India would play a central role in containing China, is collapsing.”