Three days before the Trump administration’s additional 25 per cent tariff penalty on India over its purchase of Russian oil kicks in, US Vice President J D Vance said Sunday that President Donald Trump applied “aggressive economic leverage”, including “secondary tariffs on India” to force Russia to stop bombing Ukraine.
He made this remark during an interview to NBC News on its ‘Meet the Press’ programme while responding to a question on how was the US putting pressure on Russia to get to the table on the Ukraine war.
Trump has applied “aggressive economic leverage,” for example “secondary tariffs on India, to try to make it harder for the Russians to get rich from their oil economy,” Vance said.
This comes a day after External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar reiterated that the US tariff was “unjustified and unfair”, and said it was being wrongly “presented as an oil issue”.
The Trump administration has been highly critical of India for its procurement of discounted crude oil from Russia. Incidentally, Washington has not criticised China, the largest importer of Russian crude oil.
Trump and his senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, have been criticising India for buying Russian oil and fuelling the Kremlin war machine.
By imposing a 25 per penalty over Russian oil purchase, Trump has announced a total of 50 per cent tariff on Indian products, the highest on any country globally.
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India has been maintaining that its energy procurement, including from Russia, is driven by national interest and market dynamics.
During the NBC News interview, Vance exuded confidence that the US can broker an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine despite potential hang-ups that have emerged since President Trump’s meeting this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
“We believe we have already seen some significant concessions from both sides, just in the last few weeks,” he said.
“He (Trump) tried to make it clear that Russia can be re-invited into the world economy if they stop the killing. But they are going to continue to be isolated if they don’t stop the killing,” he said.
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Earlier this week, Jaishankar, while visiting Moscow where he also met Putin, said he was “very perplexed” by the additional 25 per cent US tariff on India because “it was the Americans” who said, “we should do everything to stabilise the world’s energy markets, including buying oil from Russia”.
And on Saturday, speaking at The Economic Times World Leaders Forum, the External Affairs Minister said, “This (tariff) is being presented as an oil issue. But why I say ‘being presented’ is because the same arguments that have been used to target India have not been applied to the largest oil importer, which is China, and have not been applied to the largest LNG importer, which are the European nations,” he said.
Responding to a question on US criticism of India on the crude oil issue, Jaishankar said, “That’s really curious. If you have a problem buying oil or refined products from India, don’t buy it. Nobody forces you to buy it. But Europe buys, America buys, so you don’t like it, don’t buy it.”
During his visit to Moscow, India and Russia agreed to expand bilateral trade ties, signalling that US tariff pressure on Delhi over Russian oil purchases is unlikely to derail their partnership. President Putin is also slated to visit India later this year.
