India’s strongest pushback yet, against mounting pressure from Washington and Brussels on trade and its ties with Russia, came hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to significantly increase tariffs he had previously announced against Indian goods.
Trump had last week imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from India, which is expected to kick in from August 7. In a Monday social media post, however, he said he “will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA” because of India’s imports of Russian crude.
In late July, the EU also slapped sanctions on Nayara, one of India’s two big private oil refiners, which is Russian-majority owned. The bloc also banned the import of refined oil made from Russian crude, again hurting Indian refiners.
Until Monday night, India’s response had been muted. That has now changed. Two hours after Trump’s latest announcement, New Delhi issued a statement accusing the US and EU of double standards and of, in fact, quietly encouraging India to buy Russian crude earlier.
As India’s relations with the West – otherwise warm and growing until recently – now fray over its purchase of Russian energy, how true are New Delhi’s claims that the West is as guilty of enabling the Kremlin’s war machine as those it blames?
What did India say on Monday?
After hesitating for days to publicly take on Washington and Brussels directly, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government issued a terse statement on August 4, calling the targeting of India “unjustified and unreasonable”.
“Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security,” Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, in words that suggest New Delhi is in no mood to back down.
But Jaiswal also directly pushed back against suggestions from the US and EU that India – in buying large volumes of Russian crude – had acted in a way that broke with the West’s own behaviour.
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