By Iftikhar Ali
WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (APP): US President Trump said Wednesday that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told him that India would stop buying Russian oil, months after Trump imposed punitive tariffs over the purchases.
“I was not happy that India was buying oil. And he assured me today that they will not be buying oil from Russia,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “That’s a big step. Now we got to get China to do the same thing.”
Trump said Modi could not stop buying the oil “immediately”, but that a “process had started”.
Trump imposed a 50 percent tariff on most exports from India in late August, doubling tariffs on Indian goods and making them among the highest for any US trading partner.
Modi’s promise was seen here as caving in to the pressure from US tariffs as he previously defended buying oil from Russia, despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Observers noted that Modi seemed desperate to repair the relationship with Trump by meeting on Saturday with the new US ambassador, close Trump political aide Sergio Gor, hours after he arrived in New Delhi.
Gor said after the meeting that the Trump administration valued the relationship with India and that he was “optimistic,” pointing to a telephone call between Trump and Modi, according to media reports.
Before leaving for Washington to lead further trade talks, India’s commerce secretary Rajesh Agrawal said that there was “headroom” for New Delhi to purchase an additional $15 billion of US oil at “the right price” while maintaining a diversity of sources.
Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, India imported a small amount of Russian crude oil but has since become the largest buyer of seaborne shipments. The international oil benchmark Brent moved slightly higher after Trump’s comments.
While several large US trading partners have managed to strike deals with the Trump administration to lower the punitive tariffs on their goods, India has failed to clinch any agreement.
The president had argued India’s purchases of Russian oil were fueling Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine. He has since called on European Nations to do more to limit their purchases of Russian oil.
The move increased tensions between the U.S. and India, and Modi met in September with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in a gathering that was seen as a rebuke to the United States.