Trump raises tariffs on India to 50 percent, citing Russian oil purchases

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will raise tariffs on imports from India to 50 percent, targeting one of the United States’ largest trading partners over its purchases of Russian oil.

Imports from India were set to face a 25 percent duty starting after midnight Thursday as part of the White House’s sweeping attempt to overhaul the international trade order. The additional 25 percent tax will begin in three weeks, according to an executive order Trump issued Wednesday, which accused India of “directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil.” The order said the tariff was a response to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.

The president had signaled the move in advance while falsely suggesting that foreign countries pay the cost of tariffs. Importers - in this case, U.S. businesses and consumers - are responsible for paying import duties, not exporters.

“India is not only buying massive amounts of Russian Oil, they are then, for much of the Oil purchased, selling it on the Open Market for big profits,” he posted on his social media platform Monday. “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.”

U.S. companies have scrambled to avoid the new costs of import taxes. Apple was expected Wednesday afternoon to announce a fresh $100 billion investment in domestic manufacturing in an attempt to divert production of critical components for data centers and consumer electronics away from countries targeted by Trump’s trade war. The company had already shifted some production of iPhones destined for U.S. markets from China to India.

“Today’s announcement with Apple is another win for our manufacturing industry that will simultaneously help reshore the production of critical components to protect America’s economic and national security,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement.

Trump has long held that imposing taxes on trade will improve the nation’s grim finances and rebalance relationships with foreign nations that he says are taking advantage of the U.S. He has also used tariffs in recent weeks to try to accomplish foreign policy objectives, dangling threats of new trade barriers to stop skirmishes between Thailand and Cambodia.

But consumers often ultimately pay for tariffs through higher prices, even if some of the costs are spread throughout the supply chain. And there are many nations with which the U.S. must trade to secure goods that can’t be made or grown at home. Some economists worry that Trump’s new trade policy could cause the economy to shrink and rupture certain alliances that domestic producers have relied upon to manufacture cheap goods.

Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesman for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, wrote in a social media post Wednesday that it was “extremely unfortunate that the U.S. should choose to impose additional tariffs on India for actions that several other countries are also taking in their own national interest.” He added that India believes “these actions are unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” and that purchases of Russian oil were “based on market factors.”

India is the United States’ 12th-largest trading partner; the two countries have exchanged $78.4 billion in goods from Jan. 1 through June, according to federal data.

India also has an informal economic alliance with Russia as part of the BRICS bloc of nations, a group that also includes Brazil, China and South Africa.

Those nations have brought some of Trump’s most difficult negotiations over tariffs. The White House has announced frameworks of trade deals with close to a dozen of the country’s largest commercial partners. But the administration does not have an arrangement with China, instead extending a temporary truce as talks continue. And Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on Brazil over the country’s anti-corruption investigation into former president Jair Bolsonaro, a close ally of Trump’s.

Trump and Indian Prime Minister Nerendra Modi appeared in recent weeks to be close to their own agreement, but divisions remain on barriers surrounding U.S. agricultural and dairy exports and India’s relationship with Russia.

New Delhi watchers had hoped that Trump’s relationship with Modi would clear remaining obstacles to that deal. Trump in his first term hosted a massive “Howdy Modi!” rally for the Indian leader in Houston. Modi in 2020 reciprocated with a “Namaste Trump” rally in Ahmedabad, India.

Under President Joe Biden, the U.S. government was more economically lenient toward India than other nations that maintained ties with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, and the two nations have worked closely to counter Chinese influence in parts of Asia.

Modi was one of the first foreign leaders to visit Trump, announcing plans for new defense and energy partnerships. In June, Trump accepted an invitation from the prime minister to visit India for the next summit of Quad leaders, a four-nation security group comprising the United States, India, Australia and Japan.

But recently Trump has sought deeper ties with Pakistan, India’s top rival, even attempting - via social media - to broker a solution between the two countries on the long-disputed Kashmir region.

“The good news is we do have some level of reservoir of goodwill that we’ve built up, but we are spending that rapidly right now, with the day-to-day antagonism of India, which appears to be focused mainly on getting this trade agreement across the finish line,” said Richard Rossow, the chair on India and emerging Asia economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump’s stance on Russian oil puts New Delhi in a predicament. India has been the top buyer of Russian crude oil since 2023, importing 89 million tons last year, according to data compiled by the shipping data tracking company Kpler. Russian crude accounts for 38 percent of India’s oil imports, Kpler data showed.

“I don’t care what India does with Russia,” Trump posted on Truth Social last week. “They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.”

India also receives 36 percent of its military arms imports from Russia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, though that dipped from 72 percent between 2010 to 2014.

Sushant Singh, a lecturer of South Asian Studies at Yale University, said India’s reliance on Moscow for oil and defense systems, such as the S-400 surface-to-air missile system, make New Delhi’s calculation difficult.

“It’s a very tough situation India is caught in,” Singh said.

Trump’s tariffs have caused a political headache for Modi. The main opposition, the Indian Congress Party, is painting him in social media posts as a weak prime minister whose efforts to befriend Trump through joint political rallies, bear hugs and Oval Office visits have yielded little.

Singh said it indicates that India’s foreign policy under Modi, heavy on personality and events, is not resulting in long-lasting friendships that prove economically beneficial for New Delhi.

“It puts India in an embarrassing position,” he said. “But more than for India, it’s personally embarrassing for Mr. Modi.”

Many of the levies Trump imposed were enacted using emergency economic powers that the White House has claimed without precedent. The traditional process of imposing formal trade barriers can take months or years - and formal trade deals can take a decade of negotiations, rather than the sparse social media-length posts that the president has used to herald the new frameworks.