Top US Officials Shared Ridiculous Reasons For Their Country’s Punitive Tariffs On India

They claim that it’s “profiteering” off of the Ukrainian Conflict and “funding Putin’s war machine”.

The US punished India for its energy imports from Russia by imposing additional 25% tariffs on it, thus bringing their total tariffs to 50%, despite China and the EU being the largest respective importers of Russian oil and LNG according to Minister of External Affairs Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended this policy by accusing India of “profiteering”, while Trump’s senior counselor Peter Navarro did the same on the supposed basis that India is “funding Putin’s war machine”.

As regards Bessent’s claim, while it’s true that India exports some processed Russian oil to the West, Jaishankar revealed in his aforesaid comments that “the Americans said for the last few years that we should do everything to stabilize the world energy markets, including buying oil from Russia.” For context, a representative from India’s Petroleum Ministry claimed in late 2023 that these imports prevented “havoc” on the market, which was analyzed here at the time as averting a global polycrisis.

In response to Navarro, he’s turning a blind eye towards China and the EU’s imports of Russian oil and LNG, which “fund Putin’s war machine” much more than India’s imports do. He’s also ignoring what Putin revealed during his Anchorage Summit with Trump about how Russian-US trade has increased by 20% since his counterpart returned to office. These double standards in turn lend credence to the claim that the US has ulterior economic and strategic motives for singling India out for its trade with Russia.

In view of the above, it’s therefore the case that India’s so-called “profiteering” was hitherto a US-requested service to stabilize the global energy markets until very recently while China, the EU, and to a lesser extent, even the US also “fund Putin’s war machine”, yet only India is being punished for this. Accordingly, the US’ policy reversal proves that ulterior motives are at play, and they’re all centered on its quest to subordinate India as a vassal state. India, however, refuses to accept this role.

So opposed is India to becoming the US’ vassal that it just began patching up its problems with China, which Jaishankar previously implied is pursuing a unipolarity in Asia, thus nullifying the primary reason over the past decade for strengthening ties with the US. Prime Minister Narendra Modi apparently concluded that it’s better for his country to manage its rivalry with China bilaterally without US assistance than to subordinate itself to the US and thus risk being weaponized as an anti-Chinese proxy.

The Sino-Indo rapprochement is still in its early stages and will require politically difficult mutual compromises to proceed to the point where it makes a geostrategically meaningful difference, but the resumption of border trade and flights shows that they’re serious about improving their relations. Modi’s first trip to China in seven years to attend the forthcoming SCO Summit in Tianjin will likely include a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss precisely such compromises.

These fast-moving developments wouldn’t be possible had Trump retained his first term’s Indophilic policy like was expected. Just a little more than half a year ago, it would have been considered a political fantasy to imagine the US openly favoring Pakistan over India and turning a blind eye towards China’s import of Russian energy, yet that’s what his regional policy turned out to be. Try as he might, he won’t succeed in subordinating India as a vassal, which can rely on Russia and now China to avoid this fate.