Trump insists Modi called him to end war after tariff threat as US panel says China leveraged conflict to test its weapons

TOI Correspondent from Washington: US President Donald Trump is insisting Prime Minister Narendra Modi called him to end the war against Pakistan after he (Trump) threatened a 350 percent tariff against both countries. The claim comes on the heels of a congressional report crediting Pakistan's battlefield “success” to Chinese weaponry and accusing Beijing of exploiting the chaos for geopolitical gain, even as Trump is hawking US arms across the world, Saudi Arabia being the latest recipient.

Trump’s narrative on settling the India-Pak war, which gets more elaborate with each telling (more than 60 times so far), included Modi calling him to say “We’re done” with the war, which in the US President’s view would have gone nuclear and resulted in nuclear dust over Los Angeles. New Delhi has repeatedly denied there was any call between the two leaders during or immediately after the short four-day clash.




Trump’s assertions, which get more embellishments with each recall, came hours after a two-page analysis in the 2025 Annual Report to Congress by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) – a bipartisan panel mandated to scrutinize Sino-American security dynamics – framed Pakistan's "military success" as a showcase for Beijing's arsenal, which constitutes 82% of Islamabad's arms imports from 2019–2023.

"Pakistan’s military success over India in its four-day clash showcased Chinese weaponry," the document asserts, citing the combat debut of HQ-9 surface-to-air missiles and Wing Loong II drones that reportedly intercepted Indian incursions. “While characterization of this conflict as a “proxy war” may overstate China’s role as an instigator, Beijing opportunistically leveraged the conflict to test and advertise the sophistication of its weapons, useful in the contexts of its ongoing border tensions with India and its expanding defense industry goals,” the report said. It also spotlights pre-conflict Sino-Pakistani drills: the Warrior-VIII land exercises in October 2024 and the AMAN-2025 naval maneuvers in February, which honed interoperability in contested airspace.

The disquisition on Chinese arms comes even as Trump, a self-professed peacemaker, boasts frequently about the primacy and sophistication of U.S military hardware, hawking it to allies in Europe, the Gulf, and East Asia. Earlier this week, the Trump administration notified Congress its approval for the sale of Javelin anti-tank system and Excalibur projectiles to India in a $93 million contract -- chump change compared to the billions in sales it is lining up for Saudi Arabia. The U.S is also trying to wean Pakistan away from Chinese military dependence.

The USSC report meanwhile alleged that post India-Pak ceasefire, Beijing orchestrated a sophisticated disinformation blitz to undermine western arms. Using AI-generated deepfakes and morphed imagery, Chinese state-linked actors flooded social media with fabricated footage of Rafale jets malfunctioning, aiming to erode French arms sales in South Asia, it said. This ploy reportedly swayed Indonesia to suspend a $8.1 billion Rafale deal in June 2025, redirecting interest toward China's J-35 stealth fighter. "The conflict drew global attention to the China-Pakistan defense nexus," the report warns, underscoring escalation risks in a nuclear flashpoint where miscalculation could cascade regionally.

The report also looks at the “asymmetry” in the degrees to which China and India prioritize establishing a long-term solution to their border dispute. In recent years, it says, the Indian government has increasingly recognized the seriousness of the threat posed by China at the border—and that it is not merely “acne on the face,” especially as China’s military has strengthened.

“It remains to be seen whether China’s and India’s 2025 commitments are a short-term function of India’s desire to hedge against tumult in trade negotiations with the United States or are a long-term shift toward normalization in bilateral relations,” the report says, reflecting on the Modi-Xi meeting in Tianjin.