Washington DC [US], October 21 : US President Donald Trump on Monday (local time) reiterated his claim of having settled eight wars in the last eight months, adding that five of those were resolved through "the power of tariffs and the power of trade".
Speaking during his meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Oval Office, where both leaders signed a multi-billion-dollar agreement on critical minerals and defence cooperation, Trump made the claims of settling those "wars", noting that he has "one more to go", referring to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
"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," the US President said.
"We have become a nation that used the power of tariffs and the power of trade to settle five of the eight wars that I settled. I settled eight. I'm very proud of that... I don't think there's been an American President that settled one," he added.
When asked about Ukraine's chances of winning in the ongoing conflict, Trump noted the possibility of such an outcome but also stated that it might not happen.
"Well, they could. They could still win it. I don't think they will, but they could still win it. I never said that they would win it. I said they could win it. Anything can happen. You know, war is a very strange thing," he stated.
Earlier on Sunday, Trump had claimed that he averted a potential war between India and Pakistan by leveraging the threat of heavy tariffs while asserting that "seven planes were shot down" during the heightened tensions in May between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.
Speaking in an interview with Fox News, Trump said his administration used trade pressure to de-escalate the situation, which he described as being on the brink of a nuclear conflict.
He further repeated the claim of settling eight wars during the interview, with five of them being settled through tariff and trade.
"I've ended, you know, eight wars that we just mentioned. Five of them have been ended because of tariffs. The threat of tariffs, as an example, kept India and Pakistan - two nuclear nations - from going at it," Trump said.
"They were going at it - seven planes were shot down. That's a lot. And they were going at it. That could have been a nuclear war," he added.
Trump's comments on the India-Pakistan conflict refer 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 has consistently refuted the claims made by the US President, reiterating its long-standing position that any issues with Pakistan, including those related to Jammu and Kashmir, are to be resolved bilaterally between the two countries.
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