The Ukraine conflict is “Modi’s war”, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has alleged, saying that the “road to peace” runs partly “right through New Delhi”.
Navarro, who is US President Donald Trump’s Senior Counsellor for Trade and Manufacturing, claimed in an interview to Bloomberg on Wednesday that “India is helping feed the Russian war machine”.
This statement came on the same date, August 27, when an additional Trump tariff of 25 per cent was imposed on Indian goods and services, taking the total tariff to 50 per cent, as ‘penalty’ for buying Russian crude oil.
Trying to put the blame on India, the White House trade adviser said, “Everybody in America loses because of what India is doing. The consumers and businesses and everything lose, and workers lose because India’s high tariffs cost us jobs and factories and income and higher wages, and then the taxpayers lose, because we got to fund Modi’s war.”
When asked by the host if he meant “Putin’s war”, Navarro reiterated that it was “Modi’s war”. Adding emphasis, he said, “I mean Modi’s war, because the road to peace runs, in part, through New Delhi.”
In a reference to the additional Trump tariff of 25 per cent imposed on India, the trade adviser claimed in the interview that would be “real easy” for the additional tariffs to go away and for that New Delhi had to stop buying Russian crude oil.
“India can get 25 per cent off tomorrow if it stops buying Russian oil and helping to feed their war machine,” Navarro said.
Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi “a great leader”, Navarro said that he was puzzled, because “this is a mature democracy with intelligent people running it, and they look us bald-faced in the eye on the tariff part and say, ‘we don’t have the highest tariffs in the world’, when, in fact, they do”.
He insisted, “There’s no dispute about that… if you look at the numbers… And then they say…, ‘We’re not going to stop buying Russian oil’. Now, what does that mean?”
The White House trade adviser then further alleged that India bought Russian oil at a discount, and then Indian refiners, in partnership with Russian refiners, sold it at a premium to the rest of the world.
“Russia uses the money it gets to fund its war machine, kill more Ukrainians. And then the next thing that happens, of course, is Ukraine comes to the US and Europe and says, give us some more money,” Navarro added.
India has called the Trump tariffs “unjustified and unreasonable”. New Delhi has said that, like any major economy, it will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security.
The trade adviser further said that India was the biggest democracy in the world and it should “act like one” and “not side with the authoritarians”.
There was no immediate comment from New Delhi on Navarro’s statement.
Responding to a question on China, Navarro said he was “so tired” of these national security strategies. “The reality is [that] you have to stop India and China from buying Russian oil. You do that tomorrow, and the war is over,” he said.
Navarro added that if everybody, including Europe, just stopped buying Russian oil, then it was only a matter of time before Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have the money to fund that war against Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee Dems (X/@HouseForeign) said in a social media post: “Instead of imposing sanctions on China or others purchasing larger amounts of Russian oil, Trump’s singling out India with tariffs, hurting Americans & sabotaging the US-India relationship in the process. It’s almost like it’s not about Ukraine at all.”
