New Delhi: For nearly a month since the White House unleashed steep tariffs on Indian goods, members of US President Donald Trump’s coterie have made a series of statements, often outrageous, with the latest being White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s remarks that ‘Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of the Indian people’.
Navarro’s jibe in an interview with Fox News is the latest in a string of attacks on India as he seeks to justify the US President’s tariffs, which he has linked with India’s purchases of Russian oil and defence systems.
“Modi is a great leader, I don’t understand why he is getting in bed with Putin and Xi Jinping when he is the biggest democracy in the world. So I would simply say to the people of India, please understand what is going on here. You’ve got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of India’s people, and we need that to stop,” Navarro told Fox News.
He further called India the “Maharaja” of tariffs and said these “high tariffs affect the workers and taxpayers in America”. The additional 25 percent punitive tariffs on Indian goods took effect on 27 August, less than a month after the baseline tariff of 25 percent came into effect.
Earlier, on Thursday, Navarro, the White House senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, in an interview with Bloomberg TV, called the conflict in Ukraine “Modi’s war” and said “the road to peace [in Ukraine] runs partly through New Delhi”. He called the Indians “arrogant” while criticising New Delhi’s continued “purchase” of Russian oil.
“Everybody in America loses because of what India is doing … workers lose because India’s high tariffs cost us jobs, factories and income and higher wages. And then the taxpayers lose because we got to fund Modi’s war. Because the road to peace runs partly through New Delhi,” said Navarro, who was also part of the first Trump administration.
A day after his Bloomberg TV interview, Navarro posted a series of threads on micro-blogging platform ‘X’ on 29 August, calling Indian foreign policy “strategic freeloading”. The 50 percent tariffs “isn’t just about India’s unfair trade,” he said, but “about cutting off the financial lifeline India has extended to Putin’s war machine”.
“India’s Big Oil lobby has turned the largest democracy in the world into a massive refining hub and oil money laundromat for the Kremlin,” he wrote on ‘X’. Adding, “It does not stop there. India continues to buy Russian weapons. They make a killing and Ukrainians die.”
He went on to say, “While the US pays to arm Ukraine, India bankrolls Russia even as it slaps some of the world’s highest tariffs on US goods, which in turn punishes American exporters. We run a $50-billion trade deficit with India—and they’re using our dollars to buy Russian oil. They make a killing and Ukrainians die. It doesn’t stop there.
“India continues to buy Russian weapons—while demanding that US firms transfer sensitive military tech and build plants in India. That’s strategic freeloading.”
1/ President Trump’s 50% tariffs on Indian imports are now in effect.
This isn’t just about India’s unfair trade—it’s about cutting off the financial lifeline India has extended to Putin’s war machine. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/bwLaL9dBTv
— Peter Navarro (@RealPNavarro) August 28, 2025
Escalating attacks
Navarro isn’t the only one. US Vice President J.D. Vance, in an interview on NBC News’ ‘Meet the Press’ on 24 August, said President Trump applied “aggressive economic leverage”, including “secondary tariffs on India”, to force Russia to stop bombing Ukraine.
Another Trump aide, US Senator Lindsey Graham, was equally critical. “India is experiencing the cost of supporting Putin,” he said in a post on ‘X’ on 28 August, along with a video by ABC News of the destruction in Ukraine. “India, China, Brazil and others who prop up Putin’s war machine by buying cheap Russian oil: How do you feel right now that your purchases have resulted in innocent civilians, including children, being killed?”
In an earlier appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ on 10 August, the South Carolina senator said, “Without oil and gas revenue, Russia collapses … the whole goal is to crush his [Putin’s] customers—India, China, Brazil.”
He later wrote on ‘X’ on 18 August, “Putin met with President Trump in Alaska because Trump put a 50 percent tariff on India for purchasing of Russian oil and gas.”
Another top Trump aide, Stephen Miller, in an interview with Fox News on 3 August, accused India of effectively financing Russia’s war in Ukraine by purchasing oil from Moscow, a remark seen as part of a wider push to escalate pressure on India to stop buying Russian oil. “What he (Trump) said very clearly is that it is not acceptable for India to continue financing this war by purchasing the oil from Russia,” said Miller, deputy chief of staff at the White House and one of Trump’s most influential aides.
This was just days after the 25 percent baseline tariff on Indian products went into effect on 1 August. The growing criticism from Trump’s senior aides indicates a tougher stance toward India as Washington aims to restrict Russian earnings from oil and weapons sales.
The new tariffs, along with strong public criticism, are meant to pressure New Delhi to support Western sanctions against Moscow.
However, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took a softer stance and kept the door open for dialogue in an interview with Fox Business on 27 August. “It’s not about Russian oil,” he said, adding that President Trump and Prime Minister Modi have a “very good relationship and that the two countries will come together in the end”.
On 8 August, he said the US already has a trade deal with China. Although “India came to the table early, they were pretty recalcitrant in the process. So there is no existing trade deal with India.”
Calling Trump “a president of peace”, Bessent said that the president wants to see this terrible conflict come to an end.
On its part, India has defended its right to carry out trade without external pressures. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar last month said, “If you have a problem buying oil or refined products from India, don’t buy it. Nobody forces you to buy it. Europe buys, America buys, so you don’t like it, don’t buy it.”
Kasturi Walimbe is a TPSJ alum currently interning with ThePrint
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)
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