Opinion | Trump's Hollow Claims: Here's Where India - And China - Really Buy Their Oil From

Senior members of the Trump administration in the US, such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Adviser Peter Navarro, have been making statements that have aggravated the tensions that have arisen in India-US ties because of Trump's decision to impose 25% tariffs on Indian exports to the US, as well as an additional penalty of 25% tariffs to become operational on August 27 for buying oil and defence equipment from Russia.

Both have held India responsible for the continuing killing of Ukrainians by Russia, because India's oil purchases supposedly provide revenue that Russia needs to continue the war. They argue that this is hampering Trump's efforts to end the conflict. The rhetoric has reached a point where Navarro believes that the road to end the bloodshed goes through New Delhi.

This Isn't India's War

This is dishonest. India has nothing to do with the eruption or the continuation of the conflict in Ukraine. It is a proxy war that the West has been waging against Russia. India has been advocating dialogue and diplomacy as a way out and has expressed willingness to be of help, if asked. The West has supplied enormous quantities of arms and funds to Ukraine with the intent of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. If this objective has failed and now the prospect is that of the West itself facing a strategic defeat in the face of Russian resilience, the attempt is to throw the blame on India.

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Navarro says that India has been importing oil from Russia in excess of its needs. According to him, a couple of big Indian companies have been buying cheap Russian oil, refining it, exporting the refined products, and making a few billions in the process as a form of profiteering.

Hypocrisy 101

The fact is that the US and Europe put a price cap on Russian oil to make a dent in the latter's oil revenues while, at the same time, ensuring its availability to keep global oil markets stable. India has officially stated that the US had advised it to buy Russian oil with this aim in view. India's External Affairs Minister, S. Jaishankar, clarified most recently that even the Trump administration at no time officially raised the issue of India buying Russian oil, and yet went ahead to announce a 25% tariff penalty on India for doing so.

India did not thrust the sale of refined products down any country's throat, a point that Jaishankar, too, has made. Europe was the biggest buyer of the refined products from India. US companies have also been active in this trading and profiting from it. It is the US that has been forcing Europe to buy American LNG instead of much cheaper Russian gas, which is why the Nord Stream pipeline was blown up. The western discourse, that there should be an international understanding not to target critical infrastructure, was conveniently cast aside.

In Its Own Backyard...

And now, in the framework of the US-EU deal on tariffs, the US has forced Europe to buy $750 billion of American LNG in the next three years as a condition for applying lower tariffs on it. That the US oil companies will profiteer from this windfall does not earn any rebuke from Bessent and Navarro. The EU will also buy US defence equipment as a sop to Trump. It is the US defence companies that will naturally earn huge profits from this, but that does not trouble the conscience of Bessent and Navarro.

Also Read | Russia Offers 5% Discount On Oil To India Amid Trump Tariff Tensions

Trump has also agreed to supply arms to Europe worth $90 billion for transfer to Ukraine, so that the US can pretend that it is not directly responsible for the killings to continue on the battlefield. The US has also just agreed to sell 3,350 extended range attack munition (ERAM) air-launched missiles to Europe for transfer to Ukraine. The moral sensitivities of the Bessent-Navarro duo are not affected by such arms supplies, but they are when India buys oil from Russia.

Isn't It Just 'Business'?

Ironically, for a country whose president, Calvin Coolidge, once said that the business of America is business, and whose corporates believe that the most important value for them is shareholder value maximisation, Bessent and Navarro think that for Indian companies to buy discounted Russian oil to make legitimate profits and increase their shareholder value is somehow wrong. Jaishankar has found it amusing that those who are part of the business-oriented Trump administration should criticise business decisions by others. To say that Indian business houses, which legally buy oil from Russia at discounted prices imposed by the US, are acting as "laundromats" for Russia, as claimed by this duo, is unqualified hypocrisy.

Navarro says India is importing more oil than it needs, forgetting that it is adding value by refining it and satisfying existing external demand, created, ironically, by the US and the EU imposing sanctions on Russia and then seeking to alleviate the costs to them of their own decisions. In any case, how does one decide how much are the US "needs" when it imports massively from the rest of the world at cheap prices to maintain high and wasteful consumption levels, running up huge trade deficits as a result? What's more, it then cites the issue of its trade deficits as a reason to deliver a body blow to international trading rules by applying high tariffs on others arbitrarily.'

What About China?

The Trump administration is not penalising China, which is the biggest importer of Russian oil and gas, with imports of 108 million metric tons in 2024. Not only that, but both the US and Europe have officially called on China to stop providing military help to Russia, arguing that if that happened, the conflict in Ukraine would end. Because China buys Russian oil and gas through pipelines and these supplies are made on the basis of long-term contracts, the price cap is immaterial in this case. But because China is hitting back at the US by restricting the export of some critical materials, Trump is extending the tariff pause with Beijing to allow for a "beautiful deal".

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Navarro makes another hollow argument to justify why India and China are being treated differently. He says India has increased its supplies from Russia from about 1% to 30-35% of its total purchases of oil, while China has remained steady at importing about 20% of its oil from Russia. China, unlike India, has diversified its sources, he says. The fact is that India maintains very diverse sources of oil imports as a matter of policy. Even now, Russia supplies only about 20% of its needs. India imports 85% of its oil needs, and the picture in 2025 is that 20-23% imports come from Iraq, 16-18% from Saudi Arabia, and 18-20% from Russia. Additionally, 8-10% of its oil needs are fulfilled by the UAE, about 6-7% by the US, and 5-6% from Nigeria and other West African countries. Jaishankar has explained that China's oil purchases from Russia have remained steady because it buys from none other than Iran, which is under US sanctions. The US has chosen to ignore this.

US pressure on India on its purchases of Russian oil is unwarranted and discriminatory. India is rightly not succumbing to it.

(Kanwal Sibal was Foreign Secretary and Ambassador to Turkey, Egypt, France and Russia, and Deputy Chief Of Mission in Washington.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author