Russian President Vladimir Putin bid farewell to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia on July 9, 2024.
Gavri Grigorov | By Reuters
Russia aggravated its excitement in spitting between India and the United States on Tuesday, with the Kremlin saying New Delhi is free to choose its own trading partner.
The leadership in Washington and India is in loggerheads on imports of Russian oil, and if U.S. President Donald Trump threatens New Delhi, he should take steeper tariffs if he continues to buy goods from Russia.
The Kremlin is a key trading partner of India and has remained silent during the past few days of outbreak, commenting on Tuesday that Trump’s tariff threat was “trying to force the country to cease trade relations with Russia.”
“We don’t think such statements are legitimate,” Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov continued in his speech to reporters on Tuesday.
“We believe that sovereign states should have and have the right to choose their own trading partners, partners of trade and economic cooperation. And choose a system of trade and economic cooperation that is in the interests of a particular country.”
Investors keep an eye on controversy between Trump and New Delhi after Trump Threat on Monday Although he did not specify higher tariff levels, he would “substantially increase” India’s tariffs. The president threatens 25% of India’s exports, as well as “finishments” that were not specified last week.
He also accused India of buying discounted Russian oil and “sold on the open market at a large profit.”
On Tuesday, Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the tariff threshold could exceed 25% over the next 24 hours.
“India is not a good trading partner … so we settled down 25%, but I think I will greatly improve that in the next 24 hours because they are buying Russian oil, they are cheering for the war machine and I wouldn’t be happy if they were going to do that.”
India fought back late Monday against the United States, accusing it and the European Union of hypocrisy.
“This shows that countries that criticize India themselves are obsessed with trade with Russia. Unlike our case, this trade is not even important national coercion (for them),” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Western countries use sanctions and import restrictions to stifle the revenue generated by Moscow’s oil exports, which finance their war machines in Ukraine. However, some of Russia’s trading partners, especially India and China, continue to buy Russian crude oil that their economy relies heavily on.
Since the Ukrainian invasion in 2022, trade relations between India and Russia have continued to develop. After the war began, Russia became India’s major oil supplier, with imports increasing from less than 100,000 barrels per day before the invasion (2.5% of the total imports) to more than 1.8 million barrels per day in 2023, accounting for 39% of the total imports.
– Lim Hui Jie of CNBC reported on this story.
