New Delhi: India on Thursday (August 21) said it was “perplexed” by Washington’s justification for slapping steep new tariffs on Indian goods over its Russian oil imports, even as China publicly backed New Delhi, with ambassador Xu Feihong warning that “silence or compromise only emboldens the bully” and declaring that Beijing “firmly stands with India” against the US measures.

The tariffs, announced earlier this month and due to take effect next week, will raise overall duties on Indian exports to the US to as high as 50%.

They were defended in recent interventions by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, writing in the Financial Times, and US treasury secretary Scott Bessent in an interview with CNBC.

Both argued that India’s discounted oil imports from Russia indirectly strengthened Moscow’s war effort and alleged that politically connected Indian conglomerates, rather than ordinary citizens, were profiting.

However, recent data shows that India’s reliance on Russian crude has already declined. According to Bloomberg, Russia’s seaborne crude shipments to India have plunged nearly threefold this month, falling to about 400,000 barrels a day this month from an average of 1.18 million earlier this year.

Despite the decline, Russia still remained India’s top oil supplier in July, though volumes were down 24.5% compared to June, Reuters reported.

Speaking in Moscow after talks with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar dismissed the US argument as flawed.

“Quite honestly, we are very perplexed at the logic of the argument that you had referred to,” he told reporters in response to a question about Navarro’s remarks.

Jaishankar stressed that India was far from being Russia’s largest energy customer. “We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian oil, that is China. We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian LNG. I’m not sure, but I think that is the European Union. We are not a country which has the biggest trade surge with Russia after 2022. I think there are some countries to the south,” he said.

While China is the largest buyer of Russian oil, the US has not imposed any specific tariffs on Beijing in response to its purchases of crude from Moscow.

Both countries are currently in the middle of talks for a trade deal, with Washington postponing the imposition of country-specific tariffs on China until November.

India has consistently maintained that its imports are guided by market factors and cited the necessity of securing cheap energy for its large population.

Jaishankar also recalled that Washington itself had urged New Delhi to help stabilise global energy markets. “We are a country where actually the Americans said for the last few years that we should do everything to stabilise the world energy markets, including buying oil from Russia. Incidentally, we also buy oil from America and that amount has been increasing,” he added.

He noted that his talks with Lavrov and first deputy prime minister Denis Manturov had focused on preparing concrete outcomes for the annual summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin later this year.

Discussions covered negotiations on a free trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union, market access, trade barriers and cooperation in energy, fertilisers, infrastructure and skilled labour mobility.

The minister also called on Putin at the end of his three-day visit.

He additionally raised concern over Indian nationals recruited into the Russian Army. “While many have been released, there are still some pending cases and some missing persons. We hope that the Russian side will expeditiously resolve these matters,” he said.

According to official Indian figures, 126 Indians had been enlisted, of whom 96 have been discharged, 12 were killed and 16 remain missing or unaccounted for.

China, meanwhile, went beyond merely opposing the US tariffs to explicitly aligning itself with India.

In a speech in New Delhi to mark the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, ambassador Xu accused the US of undermining global trade rules.

“The United States has imposed tariffs of up to 50% on India and even threatened for more. China firmly opposes it,” he said.

He warned that “in the face of such acts, silence or compromise only emboldens the bully”, and pledged that “China will firmly stand with India to uphold the multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation at its core”.

Xu also framed Sino-Indian cooperation as essential for the wider region. Calling China and India the “double engines of economic growth in Asia”, he urged the two neighbours to “enhance strategic mutual trust” and work together to “safeguard international fairness and justice” in the face of tariff wars and protectionism.

Modi is expected to travel to China later this month for the SCO summit, his first visit in seven years.

Ties between the two countries were largely frozen for four years during the military standoff in eastern Ladakh, which was resolved in October 2024.

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