ENB Pub Note: The Bloomberg story below is pointing out that President Trump is planning on “substantially raising the tariff on Indian exports to the US over their buying Russian oil. This is a trap and a mistake if President Trump follows through on this. Make no mistake, we have been saying that the war mongers in Washington DC need to be ignored on this. It will be a huge mistake if President Trump follows through on the secondary sanctions for buying Russian oil, LNG, natural gas, and coal. As we said in the article “Can India Replace Russian Oil if Secondary Sanctions by President Trump?”, this is a horribly bad idea, and we need to get President Putin to the negotiation table through business deals and not sanctioning his customers. President Putin has been telegraphing all along what is important to him, but our foreign policy people are listening to the wrong sources. We have been covering that from the beginning. This will backfire horribly for the most winning President in U.S history.
Blomberg – President Donald Trump said he would be “substantially raising” the tariff on Indian exports to the US over New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, ramping up his threat to target a major trading partner.
“India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Monday. “They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA.”
Trump’s post did not specify by how much he would raise the levy. Trump last week announced a 25% rate on Indian exports, shocking New Delhi after months of negotiations failed to secure a breakthrough. He also threatened more duties if India continued to buy oil from Russia.
The US president’s new threat comes ahead of an Aug. 8 deadline for Russia to reach a truce with Ukraine, with the administration threatening so-called secondary sanctions on countries that purchase Russian energy. The US and other allies of Ukraine view those purchases as helping to prop up Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s economy and undercutting pressure on Moscow to end a war that is now in its fourth year.
India has been a top Trump target in the campaign to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. New Delhi has been defiant, however, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi — who has had warm relations with Trump in the past — responding to the US president’s threat by urging Indians to buy local goods and signaling that his administration will continue to buy Russian oil.
Modi’s government hasn’t given Indian oil refiners instructions to stop buying Russian oil, and no decision has been taken on whether to halt the purchases, people familiar with the situation told Bloomberg, asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
Trump in recent weeks has intensified his rhetoric against India, assailing the country over its tariffs and other barriers to US goods, its leading participation in the BRICS group of developing economies and over energy buys from Russia. The US president has called India’s trade barriers “strenuous and obnoxious” as he levied so-called reciprocal rates on New Delhi. He’s assailed the BRICS group for considering alternatives to the US dollar.
The Indian government has indicated it intends to continue talks with the US in hopes of securing lower tariffs. India is considering ramping up natural gas purchases from the US, increasing imports of communication equipment and gold.
Officials see those moves as helping to narrow India’s trade surplus with the US — a key concern for Trump. The US had a trade deficit with India of about $43 billion last year, the 11th largest, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund.
But there are a number of sticking points complicating discussions. Modi has been reluctant to open up sensitive sectors like agriculture and dairy to the US. India restricts imports of dairy because of rules around animal feed, which can’t be eased because of religious sensitivities.
