Oil diatribe by Navarro: Self-serving and narrow

Mint

13 hours ago

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White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, once known by his books as a China hawk, has taken aim at India in a Financial Times op-ed published on Monday that reads like a diatribe. India funds Russia's Ukraine War, the article contends, by buying Russian oil, refining it, shipping refined products abroad and funnelling the dollars so earned back to Russia for yet more crude supplies.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro, once known by his books as a China hawk, has taken aim at India in a Financial Times op-ed published on Monday that reads like a diatribe. India funds Russia's Ukraine War, the article contends, by buying Russian oil, refining it, shipping refined products abroad and funnelling the dollars so earned back to Russia for yet more crude supplies.
And where does India get these dollars to buy Russian oil?
From unfair trade with the US, of course, liberally exporting goods to America while denying market access to American goods with high tariffs and non-tariff barriers, thus running up a bilateral trade surplus. He accuses Indian refiners of being profiteers with silent Russian partners. So, since we launder Russian crude for Russia's leader, in Navarro's view, we deserve the 25% tariff that US President Donald Trump said he would slap on our exports next week on top of his 'reciprocal' 25%.
Our 'cozying up" with Russia and China also gets a glare. So too our insistence on tech transfers and local manufacture while shopping for arms in the West, even as we source over a third of our needs from Russia. With our oil imports portrayed as a 'financial lifeline" for Moscow's war machine, the op-ed ends with a finger wag: 'If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the US, it needs to start acting like one."
Navarro's selective outrage need not be taken all that seriously for reasons that go beyond his record as a writer, which includes such lapses as the invention of an economist called Ron Vara (an anagram of his name passed off as a joke) to validate claims in his 2011 book Death by China.
The prime reason is his op-ed's disingenuous disregard for facts. Take Russia's exports. These are not just diverse, but to a variety of countries, including the US, which imports fertilizers, uranium and palladium from it.
Apart from crude, Russia is a major exporter of coal, oil products and natural gas, both piped and liquefied. A look at its export data from December 2022 till the end of July 2025 reveals China as the biggest buyer of Russian crude (47%) and coal (44%). The EU has been its biggest buyer of piped gas (36%) and its liquefied form (51%).
As for refined products, America's Nato ally Turkiye has been Russia's largest customer. India bought 38% of Russian crude exports, a share that's larger than the EU's or Turkiye's but clearly smaller than China's 47%. Yet, Navarro's article paints India's oil trade as fuelling a war that's essentially about Moscow's standoff with Nato—a distant dynamic in which we, as a neutral country, have played no role.
Also Read: Kaushik Basu: India must not fall into Trump's tariff trap
Is this a fear of dragons at work? Why such invective is directed at India, rather than Russia's 'no limits' partner China—or anybody at all for that matter—defies logic.
Under Trump's plan for Nato, Europe must defend itself. Yet, the EU can't wean itself off Russian supplies of energy, an indication of why trade patterns that work cannot easily be undone. In any case, if the global market loses Russian supplies, energy prices would shoot up. This may tempt the Opec cartel to switch strategy and tighten its own supply. Various economies could be hurt, America's included. Ever since the Ukraine war erupted in 2022, our imports have helped keep crude prices cool.
Navarro's prism may be too narrow to accept this, but fuel users of the world must. Topics You May Be Interested In