AS European Union leaders land in Delhi and India and the European Union look set to announce the conclusion of negotiations for a trade deal, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said there is a path to take off the 25 per cent tariffs that the US imposed on India’s purchase of Russian oil.
In an interview to Politico, Bessent said, “We put 25 per cent tariffs on India for buying Russian oil, and the Indian purchases by their refineries of Russian oil have collapsed. So, that is a success… The 25 per cent Russian oil tariffs are still on. I would imagine that there is a path to take them off,” he said.
Pointing to the Russia oil tariffs, the US Treasury Secretary said it’s a check and huge success, but took a dig at his European allies. “…our virtue-signalling European allies refused to do it because they wanted to sign this big trade deal with India,” Bessent said.
According to him, before the Ukraine invasion, approximately 2-3 per cent of Indian oil that went into its refineries came from Russia. “The oil was sanctioned, it got deeply discounted, and it moved up into the high teens – 17, 18, 19 per cent – being refined. Huge profit for refiners,” he said, adding it was the Europeans who were buying the refined products and financing the war against themselves.
Bessent’s comments came in the backdrop of European countries standing up to US President Donald Trump’s demand for Greenland, and EU President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa being invited as chief guests by New Delhi on the occasion of India’s Republic Day on January 26.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has already landed in Delhi. Earlier this week on Tuesday, she had referred to the imminent EU-India Free Trade Agreement as the “mother of all deals”. The two were on the cusp of signing a trade deal, giving the 27-member bloc a “first mover advantage”.
In an exclusive interview to The Indian Express on Friday, Kaja Kallas, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission, said the agreement is a “strategic choice” and provides a chance to reduce reliance on China, Russia and US.
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While the US has continued to impose punishing tariffs on India, India and the EU in the last six months made rapid progress, closing nearly 20 chapters out of 24, and aim to close negotiations next week.
While Washington imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, to damage Moscow’s ability to fund its war machine, the European Union too joined the US with more economic sanctions on Russia, as it unveiled the 19th package of sanctions. The EU’s 18th sanctions package against Russia, adopted on July 18, 2025, prohibits the import of petroleum products refined from Russian crude through third countries.
Official trade data showed India’s imports from Russia have declined by over 18 per cent during April-October 2025 compared to the previous year, and New Delhi’s imports from Washington jumped 62 per cent during the same period.
Further, public sector refiners have signed a one-year deal for American liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports. Amid the Trump administration’s push for expansion of existing nuclear power plants and the development of small-scale reactors, India has opened its nuclear sector.
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USTR Jamieson Greer in Washington, DC in December, during a Senate hearing in December, had said that the US had received the “best” offer from India, adding that India has been a “difficult nut to crack” owing to its resistance to importing American agricultural products.
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