India accuses US, EU of Russia trade double standards: Who is right?

Al Jazeera

2 days ago

India on Monday hit back at the United States and European Union over sanctions, tariffs and threats that it has faced from them in recent days over its purchase of Russian oil amid the war on Ukraine.
New Delhi accused the US and EU of themselves importing substantial volumes of goods – including energy in the case of Europe – from Russia, while punishing India.
India's strongest pushback yet, against mounting pressure from Washington and Brussels on trade and its ties with Russia, came hours after US President Donald Trump threatened to significantly increase tariffs he had previously announced against Indian goods.
Trump had last week imposed a 25 percent tariff on imports from India, which is expected to kick in from August 7. In a Monday social media post, however, he said he 'will be substantially raising the Tariff paid by India to the USA' because of India's imports of Russian crude.
In late July, the EU also slapped sanctions on Nayara, one of India's two big private oil refiners, which is Russian-majority owned. The bloc also banned the import of refined oil made from Russian crude, again hurting Indian refiners.
Until Monday night, India's response had been muted. That has now changed. Two hours after Trump's latest announcement, New Delhi issued a statement accusing the US and EU of double standards and of, in fact, quietly encouraging India to buy Russian crude earlier.
As India's relations with the West – otherwise warm and growing until recently – now fray over its purchase of Russian energy, how true are New Delhi's claims that the West is as guilty of enabling the Kremlin's war machine as those it blames?
What did India say on Monday?
After hesitating for days to publicly take on Washington and Brussels directly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government issued a terse statement on August 4, calling the targeting of India 'unjustified and unreasonable'.
'Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security,' Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said, in words that suggest New Delhi is in no mood to back down.
But Jaiswal also directly pushed back against suggestions from the US and EU that India – in buying large volumes of Russian crude – had acted in a way that broke with the West's own behaviour.
'In fact, India began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the conflict,' Jaiswal said, referring to Russia's full-fledged invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
'The United States at that time actively encouraged such imports by India for strengthening global energy markets' stability,' he added.
He said India's decision to import Russian oil was 'meant to ensure predictable and affordable energy costs to the Indian consumer'.
'However, it is revealing that the very nations criticising India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia,' he added.
The EU, he said, had traded more with Russia in goods in 2024 than India had. 'European imports of LNG in 2024, in fact, reached a record 16.5 million tonnes, surpassing the last record of 15.21 million tonnes in 2022,' Jaiswal said.
The US, meanwhile, 'continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals,' the spokesperson said.
India's response is not surprising, said Biswajit Dhar, a trade economist who has been involved with multiple Indian trade negotiations.
'The aggressiveness that the Trump administration has shown – there had to be some reaction from India,' he told Al Jazeera. 'For a sovereign country to hear this kind of a threat from another country is unacceptable.'
How significant are the US, EU sanctions and tariffs against India?
India's pushback reflects just how much is at stake for its economy.
The US is India's largest export destination: Americans bought $87bn worth of Indian goods in 2024. By contrast, India imported $41bn worth of US goods last year, leading to a large $46bn trade deficit for the US.
Trump's earlier threat of 25 percent tariffs on Indian goods was already threatening to dramatically disrupt that trade. His announcement of even higher tariffs could bleed India's export revenue further.
Brussels' decision to bar the import of refined petroleum sourced from Russian crude could also batter the profits of Indian refineries. According to market intelligence firm S&P Global, Indian exports of petroleum products to Europe have jumped from $5.9bn in 2019 to $20.5bn, largely because of India's ability to buy subsidised Russian oil, refine it, and then sell it to the West.
But stopping the purchase of Russian oil would come with its costs: After the US and Europe imposed tough sanctions on Moscow over its war on Ukraine, Russia offered discounted crude to India. The EU also introduced price caps on Russian oil shipped by European tankers. As a result, India saved billions of dollars, with Russia becoming its biggest source of imported crude.
For India, say experts, it isn't just the economic calculations that make the recent threats and sanctions problematic. The West is 'just changing goalposts', Anil Trigunayat, a retired Indian diplomat, told Al Jazeera. 'So, India is just showing them the mirror with facts and figures now.'
Did the US and EU encourage India to buy Russian oil until now?
Trump, in his latest post targeting India, claimed that 'they don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian War Machine.'
India is arguing that the same accusations levelled against it hold true against the US and EU – and that they actually acquiesced to New Delhi buying Russian oil when the West no longer wanted to.
'They (India) bought Russian oil because we wanted someone to buy Russian oil at a price cap – that was not a violation or anything, that was actually the design of the policy, because as a commodity, we did not want the price of oil to go up,' Eric Garcetti, the US ambassador to India under former President Joe Biden, said at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations in May 2024. 'They fulfilled that.'
"India brought Russian Oil, because we wanted somebody to buy Russian oil…", says US ambassador Garcetti on India buying Russian oil ; Adds,'no Price Cap violation, we did not want oil prices to go up..' pic.twitter.com/it3zku9Hbs
— Sidhant Sibal (@sidhant) May 11, 2024
The logic was simple: If no one had bought Russian oil, that would have shrunk the total available oil supply with the same global demand, driving up costs. As Garcetti pointed out, Indian purchases of Russian crude helped avoid that – while allowing the West to reduce its dependence on Russian energy.
Until July, the EU, too, had not imposed any restrictions on the import of petroleum products sourced from Russian crude.
Is the West trading more with Russia than India is?
That's the other major claim from India.
And the facts suggest that New Delhi is right. According to the EU, its total trade with Russia was worth 67.5 billion euros ($77.9 bn) in 2024. India's total trade with Russia in 2024-25 was worth $68.7bn.
To be sure, Europe's trade with Russia has fallen sharply, from 257.5 billion euros in 2021, before the invasion of Ukraine, while India's trade with Russia has surged from about $10bn before the COVID-19 pandemic.
But data shows that the bloc continues to buy Russian gas. Since the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the grouping has paid Moscow $105.6bn for gas imports – an amount equivalent to 75 percent of Russia's 2024 military budget – according to the Finnish think-tank, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which has been tracking Russian energy trade through the war.
In 2024, EU imports of Russian LNG rose 9 percent compared with the year before.
Mineral fuels make up almost two-thirds of EU imports from Russia, followed by food, raw materials, machinery and transport equipment, according to the bloc.
And the US does indeed still import a range of chemicals from Russia, as Jaiswal claimed. Total Russia-US trade in 2024 stood at $5.2bn, according to the US Trade Representative's office – though the numbers are down significantly from 2021, when their trade in goods stood at $36bn.
Given this backdrop, the Indian foreign ministry was 'absolutely right to call out the US and EU', Jayati Ghosh, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Al Jazeera. 'They are still importing from Russia. They're allowed to do it, we are not. That's ridiculous.'
Is this all a trade negotiating tactic?
Some Indian experts believe that the threats and tariffs from Trump are bargaining measures aimed at securing a trade deal with India that is favourable to the US.
The two countries have been locked in negotiations over a trade agreement to minimise Trump's tariffs but have yet to agree on a pact, even though India has cut tariffs on several US imports.
A key sticking point is agriculture, where India has long imposed high tariffs to protect its farm sector, which represents about half of the country's population.
'The way the Trump administration has been demanding that India open its market to US agri-business – that's a no-go for India,' Dhar said. 'Our small farmers will face a serious adverse situation; so it's economically and politically completely unacceptable to India.'
Ghosh echoed those sentiments.
'There's no question of giving in on agriculture,' she said. 'In India, you cannot give in and allow US heavily subsidised multinational conglomerates to invade our markets, when a majority of our population still depends on agriculture for a livelihood.'
But in recent weeks, Trump has also tried to ramp up pressure on Russia to agree to a ceasefire deal with Ukraine, and choking Moscow's oil exports would make it harder for Russian President Vladimir Putin to sustain his economy.
On Monday, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller accused India of 'financing this (Russia's) war'.