Washington: US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose sharply higher tariffs on India, criticising New Delhi for continuing to buy oil from Russia amid the ongoing Ukraine conflict.
In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box on Tuesday, Trump said he would raise tariffs on India “too much” in the next 24 hours, accusing the country of being a poor trading partner. “India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us, but we don’t do business with them,” he said.
Trump alleged that India has some of the highest tariffs in the world and claimed the US does “very little trade” with the country because of it. “What people don’t like to say about India is that India is the country with the highest tariffs,” he said. “Their tariffs are higher than any other country.”
He further said that although the US previously compromised on a 25% tariff, it was no longer acceptable. “I think I’m going to increase it a lot more in the next 24 hours, because they’re buying Russian oil. They are giving air to the war machine. And if they’re going to do that, I’m not happy,” he said.
When asked about the stalled trade deal between the two nations, Trump said India’s high tariffs remained a key hurdle. “Now I would say that India will give us zero tariff from the highest tariff ever… But given what they are doing with oil, that is not enough,” he added.
