India's Modi praised for US trade deal as opposition questions impact on agriculture

NEW DELHI (AP) — Indian lawmakers from the ruling coalition praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday for striking a deal with the U.S. that seeks to reduce tariffs on Indian goods, while the opposition raised questions on the impact on sensitive sectors such as agriculture.

President Donald Trump on Monday announced he plans to reduce import tariff on India, six months after imposing steep taxes to punish New Delhi for its unabated purchase of Russian oil that he claimed helped fuel Moscow’s war machine against Ukraine.

In a social media post, Trump said Modi has agreed to stop purchasing Russian oil, though the Indian government remained tight-lipped if this was the case.

Trump said he would bring down the tariffs from 25% to 18% in return for India agreeing to stop Russian crude purchases. New Delhi will also start to reduce its import taxes on U.S. goods to zero and buy $500 billion worth of American products, Trump said.

“This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine, which is taking place right now, with thousands of people dying each and every week!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Monday.

Modi posted on X that he was “delighted” by the announced tariff reduction and that Trump’s “leadership is vital for global peace, stability, and prosperity.” There has been no word beyond this from the Indian side on the scale and scope of the trade deal.

Trump didn’t categorically mention if he will remove the additional 25% tariff on India for purchase of Russian crude, but a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi late Monday confirmed that “the final tariff will be 18%.”

This effectively means that the penal tariff will be dropped, in a respite for Indian exporters who had been facing the heat due to a combined steep tariff as high as 50%.

India emerged as the second-largest buyer of discounted Urals, upsetting Washington. India has previously stated that its energy purchases were guided by market conditions and needs of 1.4 billion people but never made it clear if it will reduce or stop Russian purchases.

Opposition political parties are demanding Modi come clear on the trade deal as it will impact sensitive sectors such as agriculture. They disrupted the proceedings at the lower house, which was adjourned for the day.

While the U.S. has been seeking greater market access and zero tariff on almost all its exports, India has in the past opposed throwing open sectors such as agriculture and dairy, which employ a bulk of the country’s population.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooker Rollings on X thanked Trump for taking care of American farmers, saying the deal will help export more American farm products to India’s massive market, lifting prices and pumping cash into rural America.

In 2024, U.S. agriculture trade deficit with India was $1.3 billion.

Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said Tuesday that sensitive sectors such as agriculture and dairy have been protected in the deal.

“India has got the best deal in comparison to the countries in the neighborhood. Going forward the relationship between India and the U.S. will strengthen further,” Goyal said. “I can assure 1.4 billion people of India that this is a deal that will protect the interests of every Indian and the sensitive sectors.”

A senior official at India’s Finance Ministry, Arvind Shrivastava, said Tuesday that the trade deal will “further expand and deepen trade between two of the largest economies of the world.”

He said it will create more opportunities for India’s labor-intensive and manufacturing sectors in the U.S. market and give impetus to mutually beneficial collaboration in high and advanced technology sectors.

An Indian trade analyst, Ajay Srivastava, cautioned India shouldn’t rush to celebrate Trump’s trade announcement.

What products are covered, what the timelines are and whether India has agreed to zero tariffs and zero nontariff barriers, especially in sensitive areas like agriculture, needs to be clarified, he added.

Reaching $500 billion worth of imports of American goods would require at least two decades as the present imports are just about $50 billion, Srivastava said.

FILE - U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi embrace after giving a joint statement in New Delhi, India, Feb. 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)

FILE-U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi shake hands before their meeting at Hyderabad House, Feb. 25, 2020, in New Delhi, India. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, file)

PARIS (AP) — French prosecutors raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into a range of alleged offences, including spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes.

The investigation was opened in January last year by the prosecutors’ cybercrime unit, the Paris prosecutors' office said in a statement. It's looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.

Prosecutors also asked Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino to attend “voluntary interviews” on April 20. Employees of X have also been summoned that same week to be heard as witnesses, the statement said. Yaccarino was CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.

A spokesperson for X did not respond to a request for comment.

In a message posted on X, the Paris prosecutors’ office announced the ongoing searches at the company's offices in France and said it was leaving the platform while calling on followers to join it on other social media.

“At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory,” the prosecutors' statement said.

European Union police agency Europol ’’is supporting the French authorities in this,″ Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth told The Associated Press, without elaborating.

The investigation was first opened following reports by a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X were likely to have distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system.

It was later expanded after Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said. Holocaust denial is a crime in France.

Grok wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — language long associated with Holocaust denial.

Musk's artificial intelligence company built xAI and it is integrated into his X platform.

In later posts on its X account, the chatbot acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, said it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B in Auschwitz gas chambers was used to kill more than 1 million people.

Grok has a history of making antisemitic comments. Musk’s company took down posts from the chatbot that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler after complaints.

X is also under pressure from the EU. The 27-nation bloc's executive arm opened an investigation last month after Grok spewed nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform.

Brussels has already hit X with a 120-million euro (then-$140 million) fine for shortcomings under the bloc's sweeping digital regulations, including blue checkmarks that broke the rules on “deceptive design practices” that risked exposing users to scams and manipulation.

FILE - The opening page of X is displayed on a computer and phone, Oct. 16, 2023, in Sydney. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)