US President Donald Trump’s trade adviser on Wednesday described Russia’s war with Ukraine as “Modi’s war”, blaming the Prime Minister for a conflict India has always opposed and trying to pile pressure on New Delhi to stop buying Russian oil.
Peter Navarro’s latest rant against India came in an interview with Bloomberg TV on a day the US rolled out its 50 per cent tariff regime for India.
It was not a slip of the tongue — Navarro made that clear when the interviewer sought to correct him and said: “You mean Putin’s war.”
The economist asserted: “I mean Modi’s war, because the road to peace runs in part through New Delhi.”
Asked earlier in the interview whether the US was in talks with New Delhi to change the tariff rate, Navarro had made it clear that “India can get 25 per cent off tomorrow if it stops buying Russian oil and helping to feed the war machine”.
The 25 per cent he referred to is the additional tariff that the Trump administration has imposed on Indian exports to the US as a penalty for buying Russian oil.
Trump, who has made it amply clear that he is eyeing the Peace Nobel, has claimed to have stopped at least six wars but his wavering stand on Russia and Ukraine has only compounded the diplomatic situation.
While India has called out Washington’s double standard on trade with Russia, similar voices are emerging from within the US itself. Many there are asking why New Delhi is being singled out when it is buying less Russian oil than China.
The Democrats on the House foreign affairs committee noted on X: “Instead of imposing sanctions on China or others purchasing larger amounts of Russian oil, Trump’s singling out India with tariffs, hurting Americans & sabotaging the US-India relationship in the process. It’s almost like it’s not about Ukraine at all.”
The New York Times underscored the point in an article titled “Trump’s India Muddle”, which also flagged how China was being treated with kid gloves.
“It would be one thing if the Trump administration had opted to follow through on the threat of secondary sanctions for any country that purchases Russian oil,” the article said.
“But the decision to focus solely on India has resulted in perhaps the most confusing policy outcome of all: China, the largest importer of Russian energy, is still purchasing oil at discount prices, and has so far been spared similar punishment.”
Asked whether India was signalling a rethink on buying Russian oil, Navarro said: “They are not. And look, here’s the thing. I’m puzzled. OK. Because Modi is a great leader….
“This is a mature democracy with intelligent people running it. And they look us bald-faced in the eye on the tariff part and say we don’t have the highest tariffs in the world when, in fact, they do. There’s no dispute about that if you look at the numbers. And then they say we’re not going to stop buying Russian oil. Now what does that mean?...
Navarro added: “When India buys Russian oil at a discount and then Indian refiners in partnership in India with Russian refiners make that and sell it at a premium to the rest of the world....”
This seemed an allusion to the Vadinar refinery in Gujarat, which is owned and operated by the Indo-Russian energy company, Nayara Energy Ltd.
Further, according to Navarro, “Russia uses the money it gets to fund its war machine, kill more Ukrainians, and then the next thing that happens, of course, Ukraine comes to us and Europe and says, ‘Give us some more money.’
“So we, everybody in America loses because of what India is doing — the consumers and businesses and everything lose and workers lose because India’s high tariff costs us jobs and factories and income and higher wages. And, then the taxpayers lose because we’ve got to fund Modi’s war, okay? The road to peace runs at least partly right through New Delhi.”
India has repeatedly described Washington’s oil-related tariffs as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, underlining that several other nations continue to buy energy and other goods from Russia in their own interest.
“The European Union in 2024 had a bilateral trade of euros 67.5 billion in goods with Russia. In addition, it had trade in services estimated at euros 17.2 billion in 2023,” India’s external affairs ministry had said earlier this month on the subject of Washington’s targeting of New Delhi for trading with Russia.
“This is significantly more than India’s total trade with Russia that year or subsequently. European imports of LNG in 2024, in fact, reached a record 16.5m tonnes, surpassing the last record of 15.21m tonnes in 2022,” it had added.
“Europe-Russia trade includes not just energy but also fertilisers, mining products, chemicals, iron and steel and machinery and transport equipment. Where the United States is concerned, it continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals.”