US President Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro on Thursday indicated that the additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian exports to the US will kick in as scheduled on August 27. He added that India does not appear to want to recognise its role in the bloodshed in Ukraine and is also “cosying up” to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Navarro was replying to questions in a detailed media briefing in which he dwelt at considerable length on India. When asked if he saw the additional tariffs kicking in on India in six days, Navarro replied: “I see that taking place. India doesn’t appear to want to recognise its role in the bloodshed; it simply doesn’t. It’s cosying up to Xi Jinping…” while maintaining that “in many ways the road to peace runs through New Delhi”.
In recent weeks, India has had several levels of engagement with both Russia and China with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar meeting his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on Thursday and Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in New Delhi earlier this week.
Referring to India’s contention that it was only protecting the country’s needs by buying discounted Russian oil, Navarro countered: “They don’t need the oil. It’s a refining profiteering scheme. It’s a laundromat for the Kremlin. That’s the reality of that. I love India. Look, Modi is a great leader but please India look at what your role here in the global economy is… What you are doing right now is not creating peace. It’s perpetuating the war.”
Asked how important the secondary sanctions on India are to hold Russia accountable, Novarro said: “Prior to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, India bought virtually no Russian oil. I mean it was like one per cent of their needs. So the argument that somehow now that the percentage has gone up to like 30 to 35 per cent, somehow they need Russian to cool their homes or cook or drive their cars is nonsense.
“And what I drew in the Financial Times is illustrate how Russian refiners have gotten in bed with Indian refiners in a game in which they get cheap Russian crude — they get crude at a discount — and then they make refined products which they sell at premium prices in Europe, Africa and Asia. It’s strictly profiteering, profiteering by the Indian refining industry. Big oil. Now think about India when you think about the tariffs we are putting in place. 25 per cent because they cheat us on trade, 25 per cent because of the Russian oil.”
Having said this, he then went on to detail at length how this impacted Americans. “They have higher tariffs. They have maharaja tariffs, higher non-tariff barriers. We run a massive trade deficit with them, so that hurts American workers, hurts American businesses. Then they use the money that they get from us when they sell us stuff to buy Russian oil which then is processed by refiners, and they make a bunch of money there. But then the Russians use the money to build more arms and kill Ukrainians. And so American taxpayers have to provide more aid military style to the Ukrainians. That is insane. And President Trump sees that chessboard beautifully…”
India billed the additional tariffs imposed by the Trump administration as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, stating earlier this month that it is extremely unfortunate that the US should choose to impose additional tariffs
on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest.
Further, India had earlier pointed out that the US continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals, essentially drawing attention to the double standards.
