Will ‘substantially’ increase India tariffs, Trump warns

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to raise tariffs on India “very substantially” within the next 24 hours, to penalise it for Russian oil purchases that he claimed were fuelling the “Russian war machine”.

- Shashank Mattoo

“With India, what people don't like to say about it, is that they are the highest tariffed nation. They have the highest tariff of anybody. We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high,” Trump said during a television interview.

“So India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us but we don't do business with them... we settled on 25% but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours because they're buying Russian oil. They're fuelling the war machine. If they do that, then I'm not going to be very happy,” he added.

The president's latest threat, in brief remarks to American TV channel CNBC, came hours after India mounted its strongest defence yet of Russian energy ties, with external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal on Monday calling American tariff threats “unjustified and unreasonable.”

“Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security,” Jaiswal said on Monday, defending India’s Russian energy imports as essential for affordable energy costs.

Russia on Tuesday backed India’s right to choose its trading partners, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying sovereign countries have the right to select partners in trade and economic cooperation based on their interests.