In a speech on the occasion of India\u2019s Independence Day on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi struck a defiant note, pledging to protect his country\u2019s farmers in the face of high tariffs slapped by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cModi will stand like a wall against any policy that threatens their interests. India will never compromise when it comes to protecting the interests of our farmers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
![\"Peter](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/epa_68a2cdf73639-1755500023.jpg\")
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro [File: Will Oliver\/EPA]India-Russia ties<\/p>\n
India counts Russia among its closest defence partners, with the bulk of its weapons, including the S-400 missile defence system, sourced from Moscow. India has continued to maintain good ties with Russia, with Modi meeting Putin in Moscow amid the Ukraine war.<\/p>\n
But New Delhi has been cultivating ties with Washington in the past decades, raising their relations to a strategic level. The two countries have annual bilateral trade of $128bn, but Trump has been pushing to lower the $45bn deficit in India\u2019s favour.<\/p>\n
The US also saw India as a bulwark against rising China, but the recent actions by the Trump administration seem to have pushed India to mend ties with its rival, China.<\/p>\n
Indian Prime Minister Modi is set to travel to China at the end of the month, while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is arriving in India on Monday on a two-day trip, for talks on the disputed border between the two countries.<\/p>\n
In the opinion piece on Monday, the White House adviser pointed out that India is \u201ccozying up\u201d to Russia and China. \u201cIf India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one,\u201d Navarro wrote.<\/p>\n
The adviser also said it was risky to transfer cutting-edge US military capabilities to India as New Delhi\u2019s ties to China and Russia deepen.<\/p>\n
\u2018Unfairly singled out\u2019<\/p>\n
India\u2019s Foreign Ministry has said the country is being \u2018unfairly\u2019 singled out for buying Russian oil while the US and European Union continue to buy goods from Russia.<\/p>\n
The EU and US trade much more with Russia than India does \u2013 New Delhi\u2019s contention for being singled out \u2013 although this trade has dipped significantly since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n
According to the EU, its total trade with Russia was worth 67.5 billion euros ($77.9bn) in 2024, a fall from 257.5 billion euros ($297.4bn) in 2021.<\/p>\n
The bloc also continues to buy Russian gas \u2013 $105.6bn for gas imports since the war began \u2013 an amount equivalent to 75 percent of Russia\u2019s 2024 military budget, according to the Finnish think tank the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.<\/p>\n
Total Russia-US trade in 2024, meanwhile, stood at $5.2bn, according to the US Trade Representative\u2019s office \u2013 though significantly down from 2021, when it stood at $36bn.<\/p>\n
India and the US have also been haggling for months to agree on a free trade agreement, with Trump accusing New Delhi of denying access to US goods by imposing high tariffs.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a planned visit by US trade negotiators to New Delhi from August 25 to 29 has been called off, a source told the Reuters news agency, delaying talks on a proposed trade agreement meant to be a relief from additional US tariffs on Indian goods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US official says India\u2019s import was giving Moscow \u2018the dollars it needs\u2019 as he accused New Delhi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[521,730,3058,12,7661,1219,49,978,286,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-353804","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-asia","9":"tag-india","10":"tag-international-trade","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-trade-war","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-us-canada","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}