US President Donald Trump on Wednesday imposed additional 25 per cent tariffs on India, taking the total tariff levied on New Delhi to 50 per cent. The executive order will come into force on August 27.
"I find that the Government of India is currently directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil," the executive order read. "Accordingly, and as consistent with applicable law, articles of India imported into the customs territory of the United States shall be subject to an additional ad valorem rate of duty of 25 per cent."
This come a days after Trump said India has not been a good trading partner, adding that Washington will impose additional tariffs on New Delhi within the next 24 hours.
"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," Trump told CNBC in an interview. "So we settled on 25 percent, 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."
Earlier Trump alleged that India does not care about Ukraine, claiming that the country is purchasing "massive amounts" of Russian oil and selling it on the open market for "big profits". "They don’t care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine. Because of this, I will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA," he added.
He had announced the initial 25 per cent tariff on Indian imports on July 30.
New Delhi has rejected Trump's claims, saying the tariffs targeting India is “unjustified and unreasonable,” and pointed out that the US and the European Union are still trading with Russia.
