White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has said that “India is helping feed the Russian war machine” and that the “road to peace” runs partly “right through New Delhi”.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Navarro, President Donald Trump’s Senior Counsellor for Trade and Manufacturing, went as far as calling the ongoing Ukraine conflict as “Modi’s war”.
“Everybody in America loses because of what India is doing. The consumers and businesses and everything lose, and workers lose because India’s high tariffs cost us jobs and factories and income and higher wages, and then the taxpayers lose, because we got to fund Modi’s war,” Navarro said.
When asked by the host if he meant “Putin’s war”, Navarro doubled down, “I mean Modi’s war, because the road to peace runs, in part, through New Delhi”.
Trump has imposed an additional 25 per cent tariffs on India for its purchases of Russian oil, levies that came into effect from Wednesday, bringing the total duties slapped on India to 50 per cent.
Navarro said it is “real easy” for the 25 per cent additional tariffs imposed on India to go away and for that New Delhi has to stop buying Russian oil. “India can get 25 per cent off tomorrow if it stops buying Russian oil and helping to feed their war machine,” he said.
He also said that India buys Russian oil at a discount and then Indian refiners, in partnership with Russian refiners, sell it at a premium to the rest of the world. “Russia uses the money it gets to fund its war machine, kill more Ukrainians. And then the next thing that happens, of course, is Ukraine comes to the US and Europe and says, give us some more money.”
He concluded by saying that India is the biggest democracy in the world and it should “act like one” and “not side with the authoritarians”.
