Donald Trump’s trade adviser once again accused India for the war in Ukraine, calling the south Asian nation “nothing but a laundromat for the Kremlin”.
Peter Navarro on Sunday said he doesn’t understand why Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was “getting into bed” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping as the three leaders met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China.
They were seen chatting and laughing before Mr Putin and Mr Modi shared a car ride to their venue for bilateral talks.
Mr Trump’s punitive tariffs have appeared to bring India, China, and Russia – the key members of Brics bloc – much closer to counter the Western influence on trade. Mr Trump last week implemented an eye-watering 50 per cent tariff on most Indian goods, including a 25 per cent penalty for purchasing Russian weapons and oil, which Washington says helps finance Russia’s war in Ukraine
Mr Navarro on Sunday told Fox News that New Delhi was enabling trade imbalances and geopolitical alliances that run counter to American interests. “We have 50 per cent tariffs on India, but we also have little over 50 per cent on China, so the question is how much higher do you want to go without actually hurting ourselves,” he said.
He added, “The 25 per cent or 50 per cent is because India is the Maharaja of tariffs. They have the highest tariffs in the world.”
“They won’t let us sell to them, so who gets hurt, workers in America, taxpayers in America… Ukrainians in cities are getting killed by Russian drones,” he added.
Mr Navarro called the Indian prime minister “a great leader”, adding: “But I don’t understand why he’s getting into bed with Putin and Xi Jinping…when he’s the leader of the biggest democracy in the world.”
“I would just simply say to the Indian people. Please, understand what’s going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop,” he added.
Mr Navarro was referring to the archaic Indian caste system, a rigid social stratification system that dates back thousands of years and is still critical in Indian life and politics, with those at the bottom rung routinely discriminated against.
More than two-thirds of India’s over 1.4 billion people are estimated to be on the lower rungs of the social hierarchy. India has condemned the 50 per cent tariffs as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, insisting it will continue buying Russian oil to secure the “best deal” for its 1.4 billion citizens despite US threats.
While Russia now supplies 35-40 per cent of India’s crude, up from under 2 per cent before February 2022, New Delhi has also stated that the US has not applied similar tariffs to China, the EU, or other major Russian oil importers.
Despite mounting US pressure, New Delhi and Moscow intend to increase their annual trade by 50 per cent to $100bn (£74bn) over the next five years.
Mr Trump has repeatedly criticised India’s trade policies on Truth Social. He cited the US’s large trade deficit with India, linked its purchases of Russian military equipment and energy to the Ukraine war, and criticised Indian tariffs and trade barriers as among the world’s most “strenuous and obnoxious”. On Truth Social, Mr Trump previously labelled New Delhi and Moscow as “dead economies”.
