India is concerned with a U.S. Senator’s proposal to slap a 500% tariff on goods imported in America from countries buying Russian oil, Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, adding that the world’s third-largest crude oil importer has conveyed these concerns to the U.S. lawmakers.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has proposed a bill to impose a huge tariff on any country buying Russian oil.
In an interview with ABC News this weekend, Senator Graham said that President Donald Trump appears to be on board for the bill to be moved forward.
“If you’re buying products from Russia and you’re not helping Ukraine, then there’s a 500 percent tariff on your products coming into the United States,” Senator Graham told ABC News.
“India and China buy 70 percent of Putin’s oil. They keep his war machine going. My bill has 84 co-sponsors. It would allow the president to put tariffs on China and India and other countries to get them — stop them from supporting Putin’s war machine, to get him to the table.”
In response to these statements, India’s External Affairs Minister Jaishankar told local media that “Any development which is happening in the US Congress is of interest to us if it impacts our interest or could impact our interest.”
“So, we have been in touch with Senator Graham…Our concerns and our interests on energy, security have been made conversant to him. So, we’ll then have to cross that bridge when we come to it, if we come to it.”
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the bans on Russian oil in the West, India has become a key buyer of Russian crude, alongside China. Russia, for its part, became the single biggest oil supplier to India.
OPEC’s market share in India slumped to an all-time low of below 50% of India’s crude oil imports in the 2024-2025 fiscal year, as Russian oil flows continued to rise and dent the share of the Middle Eastern producers.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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