Trump announces increased tariffs on India for buying Russian fuel
The announcement comes as US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Russia later this week in an effort to secure a deal to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
' 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,' the President said in a post on Truth Social. '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.'
Last week, he announced 25 per cent tariffs on India.
The Trump administration has been hesitant to enact sanctions on Russia – a favoured tool of former president Joe Biden's administration – but it has threatened to use other means to put pressure on Moscow.
On July 14, Mr Trump gave Russia 50 days to end the war, or countries that import Russian oil will face 100 per cent tariffs. The deadline is Friday deadline for Moscow to stop the war or face Washington enacting secondary tariffs on countries that trade with Russia.
'We've got to get to a deal where people stop getting killed,' the President told reporters on Sunday, saying Mr Witkoff would head to Russia on Wednesday or Thursday. If a deal is not reached, Mr Trump said 'there will be sanctions'.
'But they seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions,' he added. 'You know, they're wily characters and they're pretty good at avoiding sanctions. So we'll see what happens.'
Mr Trump campaigned on a promise to end the war in Ukraine within the first 24 hours of his second term but he has found resolving the conflict more difficult than he expected. At first Mr Trump took a more aggressive stance towards Ukraine and attempted a softer tone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but he has been increasingly frustrated by Russia's continued military campaign, which has intensified in recent weeks.
The conflict began in February 2022, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine in what they claimed was an effort to protect Russian-speaking communities in the eastern part of the country. Kyiv has been buoyed by an influx of funding and weapons from Western countries looking to counter Mr Putin, though the conflict has largely ground to a standstill.
.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Zawya
24 minutes ago
- Zawya
Trump scores major own goal with labor official firing: McGeever
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.) ORLANDO, Florida - U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to fire a top labor official following weak jobs data obviously sends ominous signals about political interference in independent institutions, but it is also a major strategic own goal. Trump has spent six months attacking the Federal Reserve, and Chair Jerome Powell in particular, for not cutting interest rates. The barbs culminated in Trump branding Powell a "stubborn MORON" in a social media post on Friday before the July jobs report was released. The numbers, especially the net downward revision of 258,000 for May and June payrolls growth, were much weaker than expected. In fact, this was "the largest two-month revision since 1968 outside of NBER-defined recessions (assuming the economy is not in recession now)," according to Goldman Sachs. This release sparked a dramatic reaction in financial markets. Fed rate cut expectations soared, the two-year Treasury yield had its steepest fall in a year, and the dollar tumbled. A quarter-point rate cut next month and another by December were suddenly nailed-on certainties, according to rate futures market pricing. This was a huge U-turn from only 48 hours before when Powell's hawkish steer in his post-FOMC meeting press conference raised the prospect of no easing at all this year. Trump's constant lambasting of "Too Late" Powell suddenly appeared to have a bit more substance behind it. The Fed chair's rate cut caution centers on the labor market, which now appears nowhere near as "solid" as he thought. Trump could have responded by saying: "I was right, and Powell was wrong." Instead, on Friday afternoon he said he was firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, for faking the jobs numbers. Trump provided no evidence of data manipulation. So rather than point out that markets were finally coming around to his way of thinking on the need for lower interest rates, Trump has united economists, analysts and investors in condemnation of what they say is brazen political interference typically associated with underdeveloped and unstable nations rather than the self-proclaimed 'leader of the free world'. "A dark day in, and for, the U.S.," economist Phil Suttle wrote on Friday. "This is the sort of thing only the worst populists do in the worst emerging economies and, to use the style of President Trump, IT NEVER ENDS WELL." UNCERTAINTY PREMIUM It's important to note that major – even historic – revisions to jobs growth figures are not necessarily indicative of underlying data collection flaws. As Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale, argued on X over the weekend: "BLS's first-release estimates of nonfarm payroll employment have gotten more, not less, accurate over time." It should also be noted that the BLS compiles inflation as well as employment data, so, moving forward, significant doubt could surround the credibility of the two most important economic indicators for the U.S. - and perhaps the world. Part of what constitutes "U.S. exceptionalism" is the assumption that the experts leading the country's independent institutions are exactly that, independent, meaning their actions and output can be trusted, whatever the results. Baseless accusations from the U.S. president that the BLS, the Fed and other agencies are making politically motivated decisions to undermine his administration only undermine trust in the U.S. itself. "If doubts are sustained, it will lead investors to demand more of a risk premium to own U.S. assets," says Rebecca Patterson, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "While only one of many forces driving asset valuations, it will limit returns across markets." This furor comes as Fed Governor Adriana Kugler's resignation on Friday gives Trump the chance to put a third nominee on the seven-person Fed board, maybe a potential future chair to fill that slot as a holding place until Powell's term expires in May. Whoever that person is will likely be more of a policy dove than a hawk. Policy uncertainty, which had been gradually subsiding since the April 2 'Liberation Day' tariff turmoil, is now very much back on investors' radar. (The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters) (Editing by Mark Potter)
Zawya
44 minutes ago
- Zawya
India's IndusInd Bank appoints industry veteran Rajiv Anand as CEO
India's IndusInd Bank said on Monday that its board has appointed Rajiv Anand as chief executive officer for a three-year term starting August 25. Anand, a veteran banker, is currently the deputy managing director at private lender Axis Bank, and has held key management positions at leading global financial institutions. He was one of three candidates shortlisted by the bank's board, Reuters reported last month. The two other candidates were Rahul Shukla and Anup Saha. Anand's appointment was confirmed following the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) clearance, which has the final authority on senior banking appointments. IndusInd Bank took a $230 million hit in the year ended March 31 due to years of misaccounting of internal derivative trades, prompting the resignations of CEO Sumant Kathpalia and deputy Arun Khurana in April. In the absence of a chief executive, the bank has been steered by the board and a panel of two senior officials. Last week, the Mumbai-based bank said its "financials have returned to profitability", as it swung back to profit in the first quarter after its biggest-ever loss in the previous three months. (Reporting by Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru and Ira Dugal in Mumbai; Editing by Vijay Kishore and Shailesh Kuber)
The National
an hour ago
- The National
October 7, 2023 was not the beginning of the war in Gaza
Our understanding of an historical event's meaning is a function of two factors. The first is what we choose to identify as the starting point leading up to the event. The second is the lens through which we view it. This should be obvious, but unfortunately it is not, and the failure to acknowledge or understand it has consequences in everything from public policy to personal relationships. This truth can be ignored due to thoughtlessness, blindness to one's biases, or just plain ignorance. On some occasions there can be malign intent, including efforts to deliberately hide what one knows to be an event's antecedents for political or personal reasons. Before examining the issue that prompted this column, I want to share an example. The comedian Dick Gregory once noted that despite what Americans were taught in school, 'Christopher Columbus didn't discover America, because it wasn't lost'. His point seems simple enough, but upon closer examination it reveals deeper truths. 'Columbus discovered America' erases the history, civilisation and contributions of the indigenous groups who populated the lands that Europeans came to call the New World. Even the term 'New World' was a thinly veiled masking of their imperial self-understanding and intent. 'We discovered these lands, and they are ours to take, name, and exploit.' The American history we were taught was an extension of European history. It began with Columbus. Then moved to the Spanish, British and French colonialists, culminating in the Revolutionary War and the birth of the US. The native peoples were treated as bit players in the unfolding story – at times, a footnote, at others an inconvenient obstacle. This story of American history results from choosing Columbus as the starting point and using a lens so Euro-centric that it only sees the indigenous peoples who populated this land as less than human and therefore less deserving of defining their own history or even remaining on their land. They were removed and/or massacred, their humanity was ignored, and their treatment was justified because they were of less worth than the Europeans who displaced them. This reflection was prompted by the way Israel's war on Gaza continues to be reported in large sections of western media and discussed in western policy circles. US reporters appear to be required to include a line in their stories that reads: 'The hostilities began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 250 hostages.' It isn't accidental that this line (or something very close to it) occurs in almost every US print story. We all must agree that what happened on October 7 was traumatic for Israelis and Jews around the world. It was a shock that their security was breached, and that some horrible and condemnable atrocities were committed by Hamas and others who joined in their attacks. But history didn't begin or end on October 7. Recall that just a few weeks before the Hamas-led attacks, then-US president Joe Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, noted that the Middle East was the calmest it had been in years. This statement gave short shrift to the Palestinian reality and made clear the biased lens through which he saw the region. He was ignoring Israel's continued economic strangulation of Gaza (which made Palestinians increasingly dependent on Israel or Hamas for their livelihood) and the growing threat of settler violence, settlement expansion and land confiscations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A few weeks after October 7, I met Mr Sullivan and listened to him describe the pain and fear of Israelis and how October 7 evoked the traumas of their history. I told him that I completely understood and agreed that Hamas stood rightly condemned for what they had done. I cautioned him, however, not to ignore the trauma of the Palestinians – their pain and fears – and their history of dispossession. He became angry and waved off my comments as 'whataboutism'. As the weeks and months wore on, whenever I would write about the growing Palestinian civilian casualty toll, or the bombing of hospitals, or the denial of water, food, medicine and electricity, or the deliberate destruction of more than 70 per cent of Gaza's buildings, and the repeated forced expulsions of families, the responses I would receive invariably included 'Hamas started it', 'what about the hostages', or worse. In other words, Israeli lives were all that mattered. And the Israeli narrative became the only acceptable one. In other words, since the story began on October 7, what followed was a justifiable response. The Israelis' ability to control the narrative has long characterised the conflict. They would say: 'The Balfour Declaration gave Israel a legal right to Palestine'; or 'In 1948, tiny Israel was attacked by all surrounding Arab armies'; or 'In 1967 Israel was only defending itself'. All of these Israeli-defined 'starting points' are fictions that ignore everything that led up to them and the stories they tell are seen only through the biased lens of those who have imposed them. This problem of false narratives based on biased histories isn't just a problem for Israel or the US. It is unfortunately all too common, especially in conflict situations. When those who seek to help resolve a conflict are captive to one side's definitions and perspective, it is a recipe for continued tension and ultimately disaster. Peacemaking requires that an effort be made to rise above false narratives, self-serving starting points and the biased perceptions of one or another side. That's not 'whataboutism' – it's leadership. And it's been sorely lacking in the US.
