New U.S. Tariffs on India: Trump’s Tough Stance on Energy Imports from Russia

U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed an additional 25 percent tariff on goods imported from Russia to India. This decision was taken on the grounds that such trade helps fund Russia amid the Ukraine war. As a result, India has now entered the list of countries facing the highest U.S. tariffs.

India has maintained deep strategic ties with Russia since the Cold War. Although Russia is one of India’s main defense suppliers, recent energy imports from the country have drawn special attention from the U.S., particularly due to the sudden surge in India’s oil imports from Russia, which has angered the Trump administration.

On July 30, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, “Countries like China and India are now the biggest buyers of Russian energy. Meanwhile, the whole world wants Russia to stop the slaughter in Ukraine. This cannot continue.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bezent, in an interview with CNBC on August 19, claimed that some influential wealthy families in India have been the biggest beneficiaries of Russian oil imports.

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), led by Asia’s richest businessman Mukesh Ambani, has emerged as the largest importer of Russian oil. According to Finland-based research organization Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), in 2021, only 3 percent of RIL’s Jamnagar refinery crude oil imports came from Russia. However, after the start of the Ukraine war, this share rose to an average of 50 percent in 2025.

In the first seven months of 2025 alone, the Jamnagar refinery imported 18.3 million tons of crude oil from Russia, 64 percent more than the previous year, with a market value of nearly 8.7 billion U.S. dollars. According to CREA, this figure is only 12 percent lower than total imports in 2024.

Analyst Vaibhav Raghunandan notes that the price cap on Russian oil, implemented in February 2023, made imports more attractive for countries like India, even though the cap was primarily designed to reduce Russian revenue.