WASHINGTON: Accusing New Delhi of not only buying massive amounts of Russian oil but also selling much of it in the open market for big profits, US President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to "substantially" raise tariffs on Indian exports to the US, casting a dark shadow on the Indian economy and US-India ties.
Trump's blunt and open threat, which came on top of the 25 per cent tariffs and unquantified penalty he has already announced last week, did not specify if there would be more or higher tariffs (taxes) than he has already rolled out. But what seems certain is that he is angered by India's obduracy in not concluding a trade deal on his terms and its insistence on continuing to buy discounted Russian oil.
In a message he posted on his "Truth Social" platform, Trump also accused India of not caring "how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine." Trump surrogates have alleged that India and China are virtually bankrolling the war because they are among the world's top two oil importers, and revenue from hydrocarbons is what is funding the Russian military.
The charge that New Delhi is re-selling Russian oil for profit appears to be a distortion, twisting India's large refining capacity that makes Russian oil suitable for export, including to Europe.
Trump is also irked by India's stodgy repudiation of his repeated claim that he used the bait of trade to stop the India-Pakistan war, a claim he has made nearly 30 times in several fora. Unable to end the Russia-Ukraine war on "Day One" of his presidency as he had pledged, Trump is talking up his role in the India-Pak truce in a transparent bid for a Nobel Prize, including gratuitously canvassing for it with anyone who listens.
The extraordinary threat by the US President, who has weaponized tariffs for a range of objectives from gouging trade deals from poor and vulnerable nations to trying to bring about regime change (like in Brazil) to dismantling groups like BRICS that he sees as a threat to the US and the primacy of its currency, is unprecedented in history.
Combined with Trump's sudden love for Pakistan ostensibly for its glib backing for a Nobel Prize for his, it evokes among some commentators memories of Washington's infamous 1970's "tilt" during the Nixon administration, when the US tried to bully New Delhi during the Bangladesh Liberation War by sending the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal with the nuclear powered USS Enterprise.
While a much weaker India refused to be browbeaten by the Nixon-Kissinger threat at that time, New Delhi appears to be in as defiant a mood in the face of Trump's belligerence, risking what some experts have said could be a 2 per cent blow to its GDP growth (currently clocking around 6.5 per cent), but which some government surrogates say could be as low as 0.2 per cent.
Trump's blunt and open threat, which came on top of the 25 per cent tariffs and unquantified penalty he has already announced last week, did not specify if there would be more or higher tariffs (taxes) than he has already rolled out. But what seems certain is that he is angered by India's obduracy in not concluding a trade deal on his terms and its insistence on continuing to buy discounted Russian oil.
In a message he posted on his "Truth Social" platform, Trump also accused India of not caring "how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine." Trump surrogates have alleged that India and China are virtually bankrolling the war because they are among the world's top two oil importers, and revenue from hydrocarbons is what is funding the Russian military.
The charge that New Delhi is re-selling Russian oil for profit appears to be a distortion, twisting India's large refining capacity that makes Russian oil suitable for export, including to Europe.
Trump is also irked by India's stodgy repudiation of his repeated claim that he used the bait of trade to stop the India-Pakistan war, a claim he has made nearly 30 times in several fora. Unable to end the Russia-Ukraine war on "Day One" of his presidency as he had pledged, Trump is talking up his role in the India-Pak truce in a transparent bid for a Nobel Prize, including gratuitously canvassing for it with anyone who listens.
The extraordinary threat by the US President, who has weaponized tariffs for a range of objectives from gouging trade deals from poor and vulnerable nations to trying to bring about regime change (like in Brazil) to dismantling groups like BRICS that he sees as a threat to the US and the primacy of its currency, is unprecedented in history.
Combined with Trump's sudden love for Pakistan ostensibly for its glib backing for a Nobel Prize for his, it evokes among some commentators memories of Washington's infamous 1970's "tilt" during the Nixon administration, when the US tried to bully New Delhi during the Bangladesh Liberation War by sending the US Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal with the nuclear powered USS Enterprise.
While a much weaker India refused to be browbeaten by the Nixon-Kissinger threat at that time, New Delhi appears to be in as defiant a mood in the face of Trump's belligerence, risking what some experts have said could be a 2 per cent blow to its GDP growth (currently clocking around 6.5 per cent), but which some government surrogates say could be as low as 0.2 per cent.
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Trump threatens more tariff saying India is reselling Russian oil
