The White House is placing an additional 25% tariff on imports from India, bringing total tariffs up to 50%, in retaliation over the country’s purchase of oil from Russia, according to an executive order signed on Wednesday morning.
India has 21 days to respond to the potential tariffs before they go into effect. The tariffs will be tacked on to a 25% tariff on India Donald Trump set last week as a “penalty” for the country’s trading relationship with Russia.
Last week, the president wrote on social media that India has “always bought a vast majority of their military equipment from Russia, and are Russia’s largest buyer of energy”.
“I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care,” he wrote.
Trump had signaled on Tuesday that he would imminently announce new tariffs, telling CNBC that the country is “fueling the war machine” against Ukraine.
In statements, India’s foreign ministry said that “it is unjustified to single out” the country.
“It is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia,” the ministry said in a statement.
Trump has also been critical of India’s role in the Brics trading bloc formed among some of the US’s trading partners and competitors, including Brazil, Russia, China and India. Trump has called the group “anti the United States”.
In 2024, Indian imports into the US were estimated to be worth $129bn (£97bn).
India now faces the highest tariff rate along with Brazil, which also has 50% tariffs in response to the country’s arrest of its former president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally. A slate of Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs are set to go into effect this Friday, including the 50% tariff on Brazil, a 35% tariff on Canada and a 25% tariff on Mexico.
In recent weeks, Trump has set his sights on ending Russia’s war on Ukraine, which he had said he would end in his first 24 hours in office, through US intervention. Trump set a 10-day deadline for this Friday for Russia to make a peace deal with Ukraine. US special envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow on Wednesday to hold talks with the Kremlin, though neither side had put out statements about how the three-hour visit went.
When Trump was asked on Sunday what would happen if Russia doesn’t end the war by his Friday deadline, he said: “Well, there will be sanctions, but they seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions.”
