New York/Moscow, Aug 5: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said India has not been a good trading partner and announced that he will raise the tariffs on New Delhi “very substantially” over the next 24 hours because it is buying Russian oil.
“With India, what people don’t like to say about India, they’re the highest tariff nation. They have the highest tariff of anybody. We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high,” Trump said in an interview with CNBC Squawk Box.
“India has not been a good trading partner, because they do a lot of business with us, but we don’t do business with them. So we settled on 25% (tariff), but I think I’m going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they’re buying Russian oil. They’re fuelling the war machine. And if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” he added.
When asked about the trade deal with India that seemed imminent, Trump said the “sticking point” with India is that its tariffs are too high.
“Now I will say this, India went from the highest tariffs ever, they will give us zero tariffs..But that’s not good enough, because of what they’re doing with oil.” (PTI)
