“The President has put tremendous public pressure to bring this war to a close. He has taken actions as you seen sanctions on India and other actions as well… The President wants to move forward and bring war to an end as quickly as possible,” she said.
Trump and his aides have accused India of bankrolling Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Trump cited India’s Russian crude imports when imposing an additional 25 percent tariff on Indian imports, effective August 28.
A new tariff could hike rates on some Indian goods to 50 percent, potentially halting nearly $87 billion in US imports from India.
On Monday, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro claimed that India’s purchases of Russian crude were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine, adding that New Delhi was “now cozying up to both Russia and China.”
“If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times on Monday with title “India’s oil lobby is funding Putin’s war machine — that has to stop”.
“This surge has not been driven by domestic oil consumption needs. Rather, what really drives this trade is profiteering by India’s Big Oil lobby,” Navarro added. “In effect, India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs.”
On Tuesday, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused India of profiteering from its sharply increased purchases of Russian oil during the war in Ukraine, saying Washington viewed the situation as unacceptable.
Bessent told CNBC in an interview that Russian oil now accounted for 42 percent of India’s total oil purchases, up from under 1 percent before the war, and contrasted that with longtime buyer China, whose Russian oil purchases had increased to 16 percent from 13 percent.
“India is just profiteering. They are reselling,” Bessent said. “What I would call Indian arbitrage – buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it as product has just sprung up during the war – which is unacceptable,” he said.
India says it is being unfairly targeted for buying discounted Russian oil, while the US and European Union continue to trade with Russia.
“Where the US is concerned, it continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals,” the Indian Foreign Ministry stated in a recent statement.