The attacks presented the most serious confrontation between the two nuclear-armed nations in decades.
President Donald Trump says he threatened to eliminate trade with India and Pakistan to compel the two nations to accept a cease-fire deal over the weekend.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on May 12, Trump said his administration encouraged the subcontinent’s two nuclear powers to negotiate by threatening to revoke trade if they continued fighting.
“I said, ‘Come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys. If you stop it, we’re doing trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade,’” Trump said.
“People have never really used trade the way I used it, that I can tell you.
“We’re going to do a lot of trade with Pakistan. We’re going to do a lot of trade with India.”
Officials from Islamabad and New Delhi agreed to a cease-fire over the weekend following a brief conflict between the two nuclear powers that threatened to destabilize the region.
The fighting presented the most serious confrontation between the two nations in decades and stemmed from a terrorist attack in an Indian-controlled part of Kashmir that killed 26 people.
The truce remains fragile. Both sides have given different casualty estimates for both military and civilians, and both have accused one another of violating the cease-fire in the hours after the deal was announced.
Indian authorities said on May 12, however, that the preceding night had been the first without incident and that it looked as though the truce would hold.
India and Pakistan have come to blows on dozens of occasions since 1947, when the two nations were divided and granted independence by the British Empire.
At that time, Pakistan was created as a nation for India’s Muslims.
Though India and Pakistan have seen dozens of brief dust-ups and border clashes in recent years, the two powers have not engaged in an all-out war since 1999, when Pakistani militants crossed the border into Indian-controlled territory to seize more land in Kashmir.
Trump said that he hoped the cease-fire would be permanent and that the United States was negotiating with both countries to increase trade.
India is one of the United States’ largest trading partners, while Pakistan is one of the smallest.
In 2024, the United States did $129 billion in goods trade with India and $7.3 billion with Pakistan, according to figures published by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
Trump said that his aggressive use of trade as a diplomatic tool for ending international conflicts was a hallmark of his administration and that he would continue to pressure the nations to maintain the peace.
“We will do whatever we have to with trade,” Trump said.
“We never used our powers that way. We never knew how.”