"US Dollars Not Fuelling Russian War Machine?" Shashi Tharoor Exclusive

US President Donald Trump's "double standards" should be countered head-on and India must not let anybody dictate terms to it, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor told NDTV in an exclusive interview today.

"You can't accept a situation where one side dictates terms and the other side is expected to comply without question. Those days are over. I mean, after 200 years of colonialism, we're not going to let anybody dictate to us like this," he said, days after the US announced a 25 per cent tariff on India in two parts, taking the total to 50 per cent.

Without mincing words, Mr Tharoor slammed Mr Trump - "the famously transactional and unpredictable man" - for the US importing fertilisers worth billions of dollars from Russia, and faulting only India for importing Russian oil.

"Do you realise, for example, that the US itself imports like a couple of billion dollars worth of fertilizers every year from Russia? It buys something called uranium hexafluoride from them. It buys a lot of palladium, which is needed for catalytic converters. In the five months of this year alone, January to May, US imports from Russia stand at $2.4 billion," Mr Tharoor said.

This amount, he added, already represented a 20 per cent increase from last year.

"So, if that's going on, how can Mr Trump argue that India's money is fuelling Russia's war machine in Ukraine, but his American dollars are not? I mean, that's complete hypocrisy. So, I really think we will have to sit and talk to the Americans," said the MP who recently led a delegation of MPs to the US to brief leaders there on India's 'Operation Sindoor'.

Mr Tharoor specifically pointed at Mr Trump's inexplicable use of "belittling" language at India, and its 90-day negotiating window for China on tariff, while India got only 21 days.

"The Chinese buy far more oil and gas from Russia, not to mention trading a whole host of other items than we do. But they've been given a 90-day negotiating window, while we have only 21 days. So from August 27, in other words, our goods in the US will be subject to a 50 per cent tariff, while Chinese goods come in at 30 per cent," Mr Tharoor said.

He questioned the US president's priorities during his second term, which is not turning out any different than his first - marked less by diplomacy, but more by drama. Mr Trump's style, laced with unpredictability, misinformation and showmanship, has turned serious global negotiations into a political circus, geopolitical experts have said.

"Now, what does that say about Mr Trump's priorities? What happened to the strategic relationship with India? What happened to the geopolitical rivalry the US was supposed to have with China? Clearly, there is now a need for us to fundamentally rethink some of our assumptions. It may just be a negotiating tactic. Mr Trump is a famously unpredictable and temperamental negotiator," Mr Tharoor told NDTV.

"But I'm afraid some of the language [Mr Trump] used was very, very sort of belittling. And to my mind, we may just have to insist that our self-respect doesn't permit us to surrender in this kind of process. It really, really is severely troubling," Mr Tharoor added.

Sources in the Defence Ministry said reports that India will halt plans to buy US weapons and aircraft are false.