Bessent says tariffs on India could go up if Trump-Putin talks in Alaska fail

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has suggested that the secondary tariffs on India and China could go higher for buying oil from Moscow and the decision will depend upon President Donald Trump’s scheduled meeting with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska on August 15.

More significantly, he wants the European bloc to join the US on these sanctions. However, if the talks succeed, these measures against Russia “can be loosened”, Bessent said.

“The Europeans need to join us in these sanctions,” Bessent said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “They need to.”

“It’s put up or shut up time,” Bessent said. “We put secondary tariffs on the Indians for buying Russian oil. And I could see if things don’t go well, then sanctions or secondary tariffs could go up.”

Trump has imposed a base tariff of 25 percent on Indian exports along with an additional 25 percent penalty for importing Russian oil, taking the total levies on goods to 50 percent.

Trump said India and other nations such as China are funding Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, an accusation that New Delhi has sharply rebutted as “unjustified and unreasonable”.

Bessent claimed that the response from EU on US proposals was cold so far, especially when he floated the idea during a Group of Seven nations meeting earlier in the year.

At a recent G-7 meeting in Canada, Bessent said he “looked at all the leaders around the table, and I said, is everyone at this table willing to put a 200% secondary tariff on China? And you know what? Everybody wanted to see what kind of shoes they were wearing.”

The US, along with European nations, Japan and other countries have piled sanctions on Russia since the start of that country’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The European Union adopted its 18th package of sanctions on Russia in July, including on Russian energy.

Earlier, the treasury secretary had said that several large trade deals are yet to be finalized and India had been "a bit recalcitrant” in talks with the US.