Trump skips China's oil purchase from Russia in meeting with Xi, keeps claiming India will slash imports

New Delhi: President Donald Trump avoided the issue of China’s oil purchase from Russia during his meeting with President Xi Jinping at Busan in South Korea on Thursday, although he had been accusing both the communist country and India of funding the war in Ukraine by continuing energy imports from the former Soviet Union nation.

The US president, however, kept claiming that India had agreed to slash its imports of oil from Russia. As several refiners based in India stopped placing fresh orders for crude oil from Russia, New Delhi on Thursday stated that India’s decisions on energy imports would “naturally take into account the evolving dynamics of the global market”.

“We really didn’t discuss the oil,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One, while returning to Washington, D.C., after the meeting with the president of China. “He (Xi) has been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a big part of China,” said the US president. He had last month called India and China “the primary funders” of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

He had, on August 6, imposed an additional 25% tariff – on top of 25% imposed earlier – on all imports from India as a punitive action against the South Asian nation for continuing to buy oil from Russia notwithstanding the sanctions imposed by the US and the European Union on President Vladimir Putin’s country for launching the “special military operations” in Ukraine in February 2022. The US, however, avoided levying additional duties on imports from China to nudge the communist country to stop buying oil from Russia.  

New Delhi had conveyed its disappointment over the Trump Administration’s discriminatory approach towards India and China. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar had pointed out that China, not India, had been the “biggest purchaser” of oil from Russia. Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said that the US would not impose additional tariffs on imports from China to nudge the communist country to halt purchasing of oil from Russia as long as the European Union would not take such measures first.

Russia’s share in India’s total crude oil imports rose from less than 2% before the launch of its war in Ukraine in 2022 to around 40% by 2023–24. But, in recent months, Russia’s share had slipped to about 36% of total oil imports of India.

The US recently imposed fresh sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, the two major oil companies of Russia. This prompted several refiners based in India to halt purchasing oil from Russia.

“We are studying the implications of the recent US sanctions on Russian oil companies. Our decisions naturally take into account the evolving dynamics of the global market,” Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists in New Delhi. “Our position on the larger question of energy sourcing is well known. In this endeavour, we are guided by the imperative to secure affordable energy from diverse sources to meet the energy security needs of our 1.4 billion people.”

Trump has, over the past few days, repeatedly claimed to have received an assurance from Prime Minister Narendra Modi about India slashing oil imports from Russia. This began on October 15, when he had said that the prime minister had assured him that India would cut down its oil imports from Russia. New Delhi stated that Modi and Trump had not spoken over the phone that day. New Delhi, in response to the claim from Washington, D.C., had avoided an overtly confrontational approach and stated that India’s import policies had been entirely guided by the objective of safeguarding the interests of consumers in the country. Without directly clarifying if it would lower the import of oil from Russia, New Delhi has been maintaining that its energy policies included broad-basing and diversifying sources in accordance with market conditions.

“India has been very good in that,” Trump told journalists on Thursday, continuing to boast about making the South Asian nation lessen its oil purchase from Russia.