US says road to peace in Russia-Ukraine runs through India; no relief from 50% tariff

TOI correspondent from Washington: Claiming that "the road to peace (on the Russia-Ukraine front) runs through India, the Trump White House on Thursday doubled down on tariffing and sanctioning New Delhi, accusing it of fueling the conflict.

In remarks to reporters, the US President's trade counselor Peter Navarro, said he doesn’t expect Trump to extend the timeline on doubling tariffs on India as a penalty for buying Russian oil beyond August 27, while accusing New Delhi of profiteering from transactions with Moscow. “I love India. Look, [President Narendra] Modi is a great leader. But please, please India, like, look at what is, what your role here is in the global economy and good here.

It’s like, what you’re doing right now is not creating peace, it’s perpetuating the war,” Navarro said, adding, “They don’t need oil — it’s a refining profiteering scheme,” he added.According to Navarro, India "uses 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.

"So that's insane, and President Trump sees that chessboard beautifully. And you guys need to write about that," he told the US media, which has largely been skeptical of the Trump-Navarro thesis. The US commentariat has repeatedly called out the fallacy of the White House not acting on China's larger purchase of Russian oil and the past American encouragement of India buying Russian oil to keep down global oil prices. Navarro himself once implicitly conceded that Washington cannot crackdown on China's oil purchase because Beijing had leverage on Washington.