Nikki Haley, an Indian-American Republican leader, has told India to take US President Donald Trump’s worries about its imports of Russian oil seriously. The former US Ambassador to the United Nations wrote on X (previously Twitter) that New Delhi should “work with the White House to find a solution” and that “the sooner the better.”
Haley’s statements come at a time when the two countries are having a big and ongoing trade fight. The Trump administration recently put a 50% cumulative duty on Indian imports, saying it was because New Delhi kept buying cheap Russian oil. The White House has said that the measure is a method to put “secondary pressure” on Moscow to cease the crisis in Ukraine.
Haley wrote in a recent opinion article that pushing India away would be a “strategic disaster,” even if the Trump administration has stepped up its punishments. She said again that the long-standing cooperation between the world’s two greatest democracies is important to “face China,” adding, “the United States must have a friend in India.”
India has aggressively opposed the taxes, saying they are “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable.” Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, has also said that the country will not give up on the needs of its people. The growing tensions have caused the US trade delegation’s long-planned trip to New Delhi to be canceled, leaving the future of the trade conflict up in the air.