3 months ago
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US President Donald Trump says he will hike tariffs on India from their already-high level of 25 per cent due to the country’s ongoing purchases of Russian oil amid the war against Ukraine.
In a sign of the strained relations between the two countries, India quickly branded Trump’s move “unjustified and unreasonable”, and said it would take all necessary measures to safeguard its economic security.
US President Donald Trump and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met in the Oval Office in February.Credit: Bloomberg
The threat, which has not yet been acted on, underlines Trump’s preference for using tariffs for geopolitical leverage, and comes as his deadline looms for commitments from Russia’s Vladimir Putin on ending the war, which has now raged for three-and-a-half years.
There have been mixed reports about India’s intentions over the past week as the US stepped up pressure on the world’s most populous nation to back away from its reliance on Russian crude oil, which now accounts for about a third of India’s supplies.
Read more from North America correspondent Michael Koziol here.
