Trump Threatens India Of Tariff Hike In Next 24 hrs

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said India has not been a good trading partner and announced that he will raise the tariffs on New Delhi “very substantially” in the next 24 hours because it is buying Russian oil.

Just a few days ago, Trump imposed 25 per cent tariff on Indian imports plus an unspecified penalty on India for Russian oil imports.

In an interview with CNBC, Trump said that India is the highest tariff nation. “They have the highest tariff of anybody. We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high,” Trump said. He said that India has not been a good trading partner. So we settled on 25% (tariff), 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 between Russia and Ukraine.

When asked about the trade deal with India that seemed imminent, Trump said the ‘sticking point’ with India is that its tariffs are too high.

Earlier in the day, Russia slammed Trump’s threat against India and said that such statements against Russian trading partners will be perceived as ‘threats’ against Moscow. Hours later, India responded to Trump’s warning and labelled US threats as ‘unjustifiable and unreasonable’.

In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) firmly rejected the criticism. It pointed out the double standards in targeting it on the issue and said both the US and the EU are continuing their trade relations with Russia.

On August 1, Trump signed an Executive Order raising tariffs for over five dozen countries, including a steep 25 per cent for India. Trump also announced an unspecified penalty on India for buying vast majority of Russian military equipment and crude oil.