(Reuters) -White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said India’s purchases of Russian crude were funding Moscow’s war in Ukraine and had to stop.
New Delhi was “now cozying up to both Russia and China,” Navarro wrote in an opinion piece published in the Financial Times on Monday.
“If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the U.S., it needs to start acting like one.”
India’s Foreign Ministry has previously said the country is being unfairly singled out for buying Russian oil while the United States and European Union continue to purchase goods from Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump announced an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods earlier this month, citing New Delhi’s continued purchases of Russian oil. The move will take total tariffs on imports from India to 50%.
“India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs,” Navarro wrote.
The adviser also said India’s close ties with Russia and China made it risky to transfer cutting-edge U.S. military capabilities to India.
Separately, Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner, will continue to buy Russian oil depending on economics, the company’s head of finance Anuj Jain told an analyst meeting on Monday.
Jain said his company’s Russian oil processing in the June quarter was about 24% compared to an average 22% in 2024/25.
He said purchases for the September quarter were continuing and the discounts on Russian oil were in the range of $1.50 per barrel to the Dubai benchmark.
Longtime rivals China and India are quietly and cautiously strengthening ties against the backdrop of Trump’s unpredictable approach to both.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the end of the month while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit India from Monday for talks on the disputed border between the two countries.
A planned visit by U.S. trade negotiators to New Delhi from August 25-29 has been called off, a source said over the weekend, delaying talks on a proposed trade agreement and dashing hopes of relief from additional U.S. tariffs on Indian goods from August 27.
(Reporting by Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Kate Mayberry)
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