US President Donald Trump repeated his allegation that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi informed him India would stop buying Russian oil on Sunday. He also warned that New Delhi would keep paying “huge” taxes on its goods if the sales didn’t stop.
President Trump told reporters on Air Force One, “I talked to Indian Prime Minister Modi, and he said he’s not going to be doing the Russian oil thing.”
Trump didn’t believe India’s foreign ministry when they said they didn’t know of any recent talks between the two leaders. He said, “But if they want to say that, they’ll just keep paying huge tariffs, and they don’t want to do that.”
The main problem with Russian oil
The issue of Russian oil has become one of the primary grounds of contention in long-running trade discussions between India and the U.S.
Tariff Retaliation: The US government has put 50% tariffs on a lot of Indian commodities. The Trump administration has said that the main reason for this punishment is because India buys oil from Russia. It seems clear that half of these 50% tariffs are a direct response to these particular oil deals.
Funding the War: The U.S. government says that the oil money India gives to Russia pays for Moscow’s ongoing military actions in Ukraine after its invasion in 2022.
India’s Position: Since Western countries put sanctions on Russia and stopped buying its oil, India has become the major customer of Russian oil that comes by sea. New Delhi has taken advantage of the very low pricing, and the foreign ministry has said that the country’s major goal is to “protect the interests of the Indian consumer.”
Different Claims About Imports and Talks
President Trump first said that Modi had promised something on Wednesday, but India’s foreign ministry quickly said that it didn’t know of any phone call between the two leaders on that day.
Also, there are different reports about how much India is now importing:
On Thursday, a White House official said that India has cut its purchases of Russian oil in half.
But sources in India say that there hasn’t been any immediate decrease. They said that Indian refiners had already made orders for November loading, and some of those orders were for December arrival. This means that any conceivable cut would not show up in import numbers until December or January.
Kpler, a company that collects statistics on commodities, says that India’s imports of Russian oil are actually going to go up by roughly 20% this month to 1.9 million barrels per day. This is because Russia is sending more oil to India after Ukrainian drones attacked its facilities.
An Indian government official said on Saturday that trade talks between India and the U.S. are going well, even though the trade issues are very sensitive and the President has made threats in public several times. An Indian group that was in the U.S. last week for negotiations has since come back.