New York: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said there is a “path” to remove the 25 per cent tariffs imposed on India for buying Russian oil, noting that such purchases by Delhi from Moscow have “collapsed”.
United States President Donald Trump has imposed 50 per cent tariffs on India, including 25 per cent for its purchases of Russian oil, leading to a strain in the bilateral ties between the two countries.
Bessent on Friday defined the sanctions imposed on India as a “success”.
“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 tariffs are still on. The 25 per cent Russian oil tariffs are still on,” Bessent said in an interview with Politico.
“I would imagine that there is a path to take them off. So that’s a check and a huge success,” he added.
Bessent also criticised Europe for not imposing tariffs on India.
“Our virtue-signalling European allies refused to do it (impose tariffs) because they wanted to sign this big trade deal with India,” he said.
Bessent accused India of importing and refining more oil from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
“Before the Ukraine invasion, approximately 2 per cent or 3 per cent of Indian oil that went into their refineries came from Russia. The oil was sanctioned. It got deeply discounted and moved up into the high teens- 17,18,19 per cent was being refined. Huge profits from the refiners,” he said.
He accused Europe of funding Russia’s war by purchasing the oil refined in India.
“But in the ultimate act of irony and stupidity, guess who was buying the refined products from the Indian ….refineries made from Russian oil. the Europeans. They… are financing the war against themselves,” he added.
When asked if he called the Europeans “stupid”, Bessent said, “I said there was an act of stupidity.”
India and the EU are likely to announce the closure of negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) soon.
India had described the US action as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable” while maintaining that its energy policy is guided by its own national interest.
India fell to third place among buyers of Russian fossil fuels in December, after Reliance Industries and state-owned refiners sharply reduced their crude oil imports, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).
Speaking on a separate subject, Bessent said that the US is reordering the global economy, adding that “free trade was not fair trade. President Trump has talked about that for decades, and he’s made that one of his signature policies as he came back into the office.”
He noted that trillions of dollars of investment is flowing back into the US.
“We are seeing substantial tariff income, and we are seeing the announcement of factories coming back, manufacturing coming back. Because at the end of the day, this is really about rebalancing. It’s about rebalancing global trade,” Bessent said.
On Greenland, he said that in the run-up to the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos and during the WEF week, “the Hysteria level” on Greenland was “just out of control, driven by the media, driven by this European hand.”
“During that period, there were some very unfortunate statements that were made by various countries. So we could actually see some of these countries took their mask off. Some of the leaders took their mask off. Others were very measured and waited to see what happens.”
Bessent said Secretary General of NATO, Mark Rutte, had a very good meeting with Trump and presented this framework that the President is willing to work toward.
On US relations with China, Bessent said the two countries have “great equanimity. I think that we have achieved a very good equilibrium. There is a chance that the leaders may meet up to four times this year,” Bessent said.
He described Trump’s relations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “very good”.
“So when the leaders are setting the tone for the overall relationship, then things, if there are glitches, if there are hiccups, then they can jump on phone calls and de-escalate very quickly,” he said.
Trump will be visiting Beijing in April, and Xi is expected to visit Washington DC or Mar-a-Lago “probably over the summer,” Bessent said, adding that Xi will be coming to the G20 summit that will be hosted by the US later this year.
President Trump has expressed an interest in going to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meet, which is in Shenzhen, he said.
“So again, we have a trade agreement with them. The Chinese have implemented and have kept up their side. We’ve kept up our side. We have substantial monitoring, our technical teams speak every week,” Bessent said.
