New York/Washington, 28 August

The Ukraine conflict is “Modi’s war”, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has alleged, saying the “road to peace” runs partly “right through New Delhi”.

Navarro, President Donald Trump’s Senior Counsellor for Trade and Manufacturing, in an interview to Bloomberg on Wednesday claimed that “India is helping feed the Russian war machine”.

“Everybody in America loses because of what India is doing. The consumers and businesses and everything lose, and workers lose because India's high tariffs cost us jobs and factories and income and higher wages, and then the taxpayers lose, because we got to fund Modi's war,” Navarro said.

When asked by the host if he meant “Putin’s war”, Navarro reiterated that it is “Modi’s war”.

“I mean Modi's war, because the road to peace runs, in part, through New Delhi,” he added.

Trump has imposed an additional 25 per cent tariffs on India for its purchases of Russian oil, levies that came into effect from Wednesday, bringing the total duties slapped on India to 50 per cent.

Navarro claimed it is “real easy” for the 25 per cent additional tariffs imposed on India to go away and for that New Delhi has to stop buying Russian oil.

“India can get 25 per cent off tomorrow if it stops buying Russian oil and helping to feed their war machine,” Navarro said.

Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi “a great leader”, Navarro said he was puzzled as “this is a mature democracy with intelligent people running it, and they look us bald-faced in the eye on the tariff part and say, ‘we don't have the highest tariffs in the world’, when, in fact, they do”.

“There's no dispute about that. If you look at the numbers and then they say…, ‘We're not going to stop buying Russian oil’. Now, what does that mean?”

Navarro said.

The trade adviser then further alleged that India buys Russian oil at a discount and then Indian refiners, in partnership with Russian refiners, sell it at a premium to the rest of the world.

“Russia uses the money it gets to fund its war machine, kill more Ukrainians. And then the next thing that happens, of course, is Ukraine comes to the US and Europe and says, give us some more money,” Navarro added.

India has called the tariffs imposed by the US “unjustified and unreasonable”.

New Delhi has said that, like any major economy, it will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security.

The trade adviser further said that India is the biggest democracy in the world and it should "act like one" and "not side with the authoritarians".

There was no immediate comment from New Delhi on Navarro's statement.

Responding to a question on China, Navarro said he is "so tired” of these national security strategies.

“The reality is you have to stop India and China from buying Russian oil. You do that tomorrow, and the war is over,” he said.

Navarro added that if everybody, including Europe, just stopped buying Russian oil, then it's only a matter of time before Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't have the money to fund that war.

Meanwhile, the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a social media post said that instead of imposing sanctions on China or others purchasing larger amounts of Russian oil, “Trump's singling out India with tariffs, hurting Americans and sabotaging the US-India relationship in the process. It's almost like it's not about Ukraine at all.”