resume talks on a free trade agreement (FTA)<\/a>.<\/p>\nPre-condition for deal<\/p>\n
Mr. Lutnick, who has been more sharply critical of India, said that the U.S. President had called India\u2019s purchase of Russian oil as \u201cnonsense\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia has to basically open its market, and stop buying Russian oil,\u201d Mr. Lutnick told reporters in one of a series of interviews he gave on Friday (September 12, 2025).\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI think India [FTA], we\u2019ll sort it out once they stop buying Russian oil,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The comments by U.S. officials come days after Mr. Trump posted that he expected \u201cno difficulty\u201d in coming to an agreement on trade. It is unclear whether he endorsed the statements linking the FTA to Russian oil imports. <\/p>\n
In the past few days, two international media agencies \u2014 the Financial Times and CNBC TV \u2014 have reported that Mr. Trump told European Union leaders in a call that they must impose \u201c100% tariffs\u201d on India and China for their purchases of Russian oil. However, EU trade negotiators and Commissioners currently in Delhi for trade talks have made no comment on the issue. Diplomatic sources told The Hindu that the EU does impose sanctions, but does not weaponise tariffs as the U.S. has been doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Despite hiccups, unique friendship\u2019<\/p>\n
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) declined to comment on the statements made by Mr. Gor and Mr. Lutnick.<\/p>\n
Government officials have consistently denied any plans to cancel Indian oil imports from Russia, insisting that they will take decisions based on India\u2019s market interests. However, Indian orders for Russian crude have dropped in September. In August, India purchased about 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd), well below the average of 2 million bpd over the past few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr. Gor said that, despite the Indo-U.S. tensions over the past few months, which he referred to as \u201chiccups\u201d, Mr. Trump and Mr. Modi have a \u201cunique\u201d friendship. \u201cWhen the President has been critical of India, he goes out of his way to compliment Modi. They have an incredible relationship,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Published – September 13, 2025 01:42 am IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"White House Presidential Personnel Office Director Sergio Gor, U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s nominee to be ambassador to India,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5311],"tags":[141127,143726,143727,143728,49,978,659],"class_list":["post-419993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-india-russian-oil-imports","tag-india-u-s-trade-deal","tag-u-s-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick","tag-u-s-envoy-designate-sergio-gor","tag-united-states","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115194652710058514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419993","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=419993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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