New Delhi: In all likelihood, it’s not going to be just the US. President Donald Trump has upped the ante, telling the European Union to hit India and China with 100 percent tariffs in order to intensify pressure on Russia, report James Politi, Amy Mackinnon and Henry Foy in the Financial Times.
“Trump’s proposal comes amid frustration within the White House at the difficulty of brokering a peace deal and Russia’s increasingly aggressive aerial attacks on Ukraine,”
“The president came on this morning and his view is that the obvious approach here is, let’s all put on dramatic tariffs and keep the tariffs on until the Chinese agree to stop buying the oil. There really aren’t many other places that oil can go,” a US official tells the FT.
“European capitals were discussing potential secondary sanctions against countries such as China and India for buying Russian oil and gas, ” the report also says. “But many are nervous given the EU’s trade relations with Beijing and New Delhi.”
In the Financial Times’ India Business Briefing, Krishn Kaushik writes about the ostensible thaw between India and the US.
“Donald Trump told the press that he would ‘always be friends’ with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, just a day after the US president had moaned that India was lost to China. Modi responded by saying he deeply appreciated and fully reciprocated Trump’s ‘positive assessment’ of bilateral ties,” says the newsletter.
“Many see this as a potential off-ramp for the spiraling of a once blooming relationship. But nobody in New Delhi seems to really know what the man in Washington is thinking,” he adds.
Bloomberg’s Skylar Woodhouse and Sudhi Ranjan Sen also report on the potential India-US thaw, referring to social media posts by both Trump and Modi.
“Trump appeared to soften his rhetoric on India last week, saying there was ‘nothing to worry about’ in ties between the two countries. Officials in New Delhi said at the time they viewed the comments with caution, and would wait for more signals from the White House,” says the report.
“The US is India’s largest export market by a wide margin — the value of it is higher than all of the shipments to BRICS’ countries combined,” Trinh Nguyen, senior economist at Natixis, has been quoted as saying.
“As such, the US and India are natural trade partners given complimentary comparative advantages. Both Modi and Trump have strong reasons to mend ties.”
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)
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