Trump Threatens India With BRICS, Pharma Tariffs; Stuck in the Middle, India’s Foreign Policy Dilemma Deepens; Owaisi Takes on Rijiju; A House for Mr Chandrachud

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

July 8, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

With a trade deal with the United States still not clinched, President Donald Trump has sounded a warning to India: pharmaceutical imports may be hit with a 200 percent tariff.

Trump also said India would face an additional 10% tariff on account of being in BRICS:

“They will certainly have to pay 10% if they are in BRICS because BRICS was set up to hurt us, to degenerate our dollar...The Dollar is king. We are going to keep it that way. If people want to challenge it, they can. But they will have to pay a big price. I don't think any of them are going to pay that price."

Contradicting the Modi government, X has claimed that New Delhi had indeed asked it to withhold Reuters's account in India last week “without providing any justification”. The news agency's main account as well as its world news account were blocked in India along with 2,353 other accounts on July 3 “within one hour” and “until further notice”; the two accounts were then sought to be restored “after public outcry”, X said. The Elon Musk-owned social media giant also expressed ‘deep concern’ over “ongoing press censorship in India due to these blocking orders”.

When the accounts were withheld late on Saturday, a Union government spokesperson was quoted in the press as saying that no orders were given to block them. The Indian Express also cited an unnamed official as saying that while the government had asked for posts made by Reuters during Operation Sindoor to be taken down at that time, “those posts were never taken down”, but instead the accounts had been suddenly withheld over the past weekend.