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US President Donald Trump’s Trade Advisor, Peter Navarro, criticised India for maintaining trade ties with Russia, following PM Modi’s meeting with President Putin at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) on Monday, 1 September 2025.

This was the latest in a series of remarks by the US official criticising India for buying crude oil from Russia since the US imposed tariffs on Indian goods. He alleged that India was funding Russia’s assault on Ukraine and called it “a shame” that PM Modi was maintaining ties with Russia and China.

Earlier, he referred to India as a “laundromat for the Kremlin” where “Brahmins are profiteering”, claiming that Indian elites import cheap oil from Russia and export it at a premium at the expense of their own citizens.

See Also: Trump’s Tariff Hike Fuels India’s ‘Go Swadeshi’ Push; McDonald’s, Pepsi Risk Losing Key Market

Navarro’s comments came after PM Modi’s first trip to China in 7 years to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The SCO is an inter-governmental forum established in 2001 to combat NATO’s influence on global relations. This year’s summit saw more than 20 national leaders from across Asia, along with Russia, meeting to discuss the impact of President Trump's global trade war. India, China and Russia used this opportunity as an attempt to improve relations.

PM Modi boasted of productive talks with President Putin on Monday, vowing ongoing cooperation. Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasised the need for India and China to be “partners, not rivals”, with PM Modi promising to restart flights between the two nations, which had been on hold since a border skirmish in 2020.

Before PM Modi’s meeting with President Putin, the US Embassy had tweeted a quote by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, highlighting friendship and cooperation between India and the US. Following the talk, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social, Trump’s social media app, calling the US’s trade relation with India “a one-sided disaster”. He argued that the US buys a lot of goods from India, but India doesn’t buy enough from the US.

See Also: Former US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, Warns Trump’s Tariffs Could Damage Ties With India

In earlier remarks, Navarro called New Delhi the “Maharaja of Tariffs”, referencing how India had imposed some of the highest tariffs in the world on US goods. Trump’s post claimed that India had offered to cut their tariffs down to nothing, but that “it’s getting late. They should have done so years ago.”

Since the US doubled its default tariff rate on Indian goods to 50%, many rounds of talks between the two countries yielded no progress in improving relations. Navarro claimed that President Trump’s doubling of tariffs on Indian goods was half reciprocal — due to unfair trade — and half punitive — for trading with Russia.

New Delhi responded to the allegations, calling them unfair. The MEA pointed out how China also buys Russian crude oil but remains unaffected by US tariffs. It defended the trade as a way to maintain low energy prices and stabilise the economy. The Global Trade Research Initiative projects a drop of around 40-45% in exports to the US under the current trade agreement, with lakhs of jobs impacted across sectors. [Rh/DS]

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