India will buy Russian oil despite Trump’s threats

India will buy Russian oil despite Trump’s threats

Welcome back and live. Now, I’m Austin Westfall the New York Times has this India is saying that it will keep purchasing cheap oil from Russia. despite a threat of penalties from president Trump. The time says that the move reflects increasing frustration surrounding the US India relationship, a relationship, that was once much praised, but has been souring rapidly Trump recently said he would impose an unspecified penalty on India if they didn’t cut their Imports of Russian oil. host of the strap podcast, how camper is still here. we’ll get to the Russian piece of this in a moment. How let’s focus on the US. India relationship. first. why is a healthy us India relationship? important, Maybe the better question is why is a turbulent relationship? Not ideal. Well, it’s not ideal because it’s kind of a counter if you will to China. Uh, also it’s part of What’s called the quad, which is uh, an informal group that’s become more and more that’s over time. Where India is a linchpin and then you have Japan and Australia with the US and doing joint military. exercises. A lot of interaction with that. So, we’ve been trying to uh, basically make India uh, our, our lead Ally. Uh, if you will, I don’t know if it’s going to become more lead than say Australia, but uh, a major Ally, uh, that we can rely upon. and not just south Asia and Asia but also in the Indian Ocean and everything that connects to So it’s been a relationship. We’ve been working on for a number of years However, if you go back, historically, uh, India has always had kind of a third way of doing things and during the Cold War, they would say we have our third way, we are neither Communists, we’re neither fully capitalist. We do what we do. and they used to buy. Weaponry from the Soviet Union. and they maintain very cordial relationships with the Soviet Union, which we found very unsettling. We had a close relationship with Pakistan. uh, during the Cold War. and that has been reassessing itself shifting around, pakistanis the line itself closer with China. We remind ourselves uh, very closely with with with modi’s um, India and it seemed like everything was moving pretty close up until a few months ago. and then all these trade issues popped up. and uh now we’re seeing this uh more distant relationship. starting to emerge. so, 1 thing as we take a live look at the White House 512 and the nation’s capital, I gotta say this, India is the most populated country on the planet 1.4 billion people um is there an argument to be made how that the word of the White House shouldn’t decide how they get energy to their people is that India’s perspective Well, India’s perspective is that they don’t want to be bullied by the US and a lot of this is with Modi internal to India right now they’ve got trade negotiations with the US. 1 of the things we’re really pushing hard on is we’re saying, look, you can’t keep protecting all your agricultural Goods. Now 40% of the population Works in agriculture, very different from here. and they’ve always had these massive barriers protecting agricultural production and agricultural products. And blocking agricultur Imports into uh into India. Uh the US were a major a power in the world scene and we want to be able to export their this is causing huge political turmoil. within India. And I think what you’re seeing is, Modi is kind of lashing back, not directly on the egg issue. But uh, he’s saying this on oil, the interesting thing on oil though, is Most of the oil companies there had already stopped. buying more Russian oil, they’d kind of put a moratorium on that. Uh, there’s even 1 firm which is about half Russian owned, where they kicked out the Russian CEO and or the Russian picks CEO, I should say. and their big cases were tankers coming from Russia with oil. at literally a few days ago. turn around and went the other direction. because they weren’t going to offload their oil. in in India, that would be indicate, 1 thing. But now we’re seeing this political statement which says we’re not going to be bullied in terms of buying Russian oil. we get our sources of oil from everywhere else. I think they’re a little concerned, though that if they don’t get Russian oil then they’re really dependent on the Middle East, primarily Saudi Arabia, And uh, dependent on the US. uh, for oil. And I think they’ve been kind of working through Well, what? does that do for a strategically speaking? Are we going to make ourselves more vulnerable by doing that? So I think they’re just taking a kind of a third way in the Indian tradition. If you will. can you expand on the amount of people? that still buy? oil from Russia? Do a lot of countries still buy oil from Russia, Some. uh, the 2 biggest countries that buy oil are China and India by far and to give you an idea of how much oil India is buying before. before the war in Ukraine. India imported about 1 less than 1% of its oil from Russia. Now. it Imports about 40%. Okay, that’s a lot of oil. and they’ve been buying that oil at a discount. uh, because Russian oil is kind of cheap on the global market. It’s heavily sanctioned obviously, but it’s very cheap on the, on the global market. So, they get it at a discount, which actually, kind of subsidizes their industry and everything else because they’re able to buy oil cheap, So that’s for the gain that they get out of that. Now, here’s the tough part Is that coming up on August 8th? if there isn’t some sort of agreement in Ukraine, we may impose secondary tariffs on countries that import Russian oil. According to president Trump, that could be a 100%. tariff on what they export. That would have. enormous export? That would have enormous implications. in India. enormous. implications in China. But politically speaking. That also comes across as very much as a threat or bullying to India. and I think what you’re seeing is uh, basically some Some lashing back at this because they don’t like to be bullied. What Avenues does the US have to punish India. if they choose to. um, are we likely looking at? higher terrorists? Is that what it’s going to be? Probably right now, I would say higher tariffs and you know, I thought it was kind of interesting. that we suddenly decide to impose 35% tariffs on India and I and that was in part to I think to pressure Indians to come to some sort of Trade agreement, that, that we would find acceptable. And so they put that 35%, well that caused a lot of pressure with India and it is kind of the rule of, uh, of second and third order effects that you know, India is a, a, you know, the largest democracy in the world. and, like, all democracies. there’s a lot of different opinions that run around in India. and they tend to be very independent. uh, you know, that’s kind of their history since they’ve been an independent country, they have very independent thinking within India and I don’t think they like to be uh, pressured by a foreign power. and, you know, originally, you would have said it would have been Britain way back when now, it’s the US and it, I think, To them. They feel like the US is, pressuring them to accept whatever deal that we want to put out there. but also they may interpret that I’m sure with some they say they’re pressuring the you we’re pressuring India. to be, you know, fall into the US. orbit if you will and, uh, and so there’s a there is some push back there. Then I also mentioned 1, other thing you may have noticed that they had a little more a little battle a while back, not too long ago and uh a lot of fear stuff we’re talking about. the threat of maybe. it expanding into nuclear war. That’s a big deal. All right. Uh, anyway with all that said, after that was done. uh, as as I understand it, if I got the timing right, The uh the the head of a of India’s military actually visited the White House. or not, India, I’m sorry, Pakistan’s military visited the White House. which really irritated The Indians to no end that the that here you have this Pakistani military. uh, Chief if you will. sitting in the White House meeting with the president. After what’s just happened. you can imagine how that that has caused ripples in the political Pond, if you will within within India that Modi has to deal with. this is a tricky situation in the political Pond, what’s the path of least resistance going forward? How do we think this is going to end is India? Simply going to keep buying Russian oil is some other agreement going to be made with the White House. How does it feel? I think we’re gonna have to figure out some deal where they get oil for a really good price and certainly more than enough to keep them going. I think we, we probably done enough with the stick. We need to figure out some carrot approach. to incentivize them to do this. And I think there’s a lot of carrots out there that we have. We just probably haven’t explored everything that we could do to help them out. But I think we’re also being a little cautious, you know? Because India does at times. move the other direction, and they recently did that with uh, their decision on an aircraft purchase, which was very disappointing to the US. don’t think that that is a part of the mix of. why we’re frustrated with India. Uh, is because they have not separated themselves from Russian weapons. The problem is if they’re buying Russian weapons, then they get Russian influence and Russian presence. all at the same time. which makes it very difficult for us to work with them. on a military side. If there’s a bunch bunch of Russianskeeping their military going, All right, And from maintenance side, technical support, things like that. so, there there’s just a lot of factors and considerations that go into this. How important is? India. buying Russian oil to the Russian economy. How big of a piece of the pie? Is it there? Huge. it’s enormous. And and if they were to lose, that Indian, purchase of oil. that would cause a massive hit on their foreign revenues, which would eventually. cause them to have to rethink. How, how much they can put into the war with Ukraine. If we could achieve the same thing with China. I think that’s a much more difficult. uh objective to uh, you know, to, to achieve if you will. But if we could cut off Russian oil exports to India and China. We have little cut off the primary source of foreign Revenue. going to Russia. And at that point, Putin is is really stuck. He just will not be able to sustain the war against

India says they’ll keep purchasing cheap oil from Russia, despite a threat of penalties from President Trump, The New York Times reports. LiveNOW’s Austin Westfall breaks it down during his interviews with national security analyst Hal Kempfer.

They also mention that the move reflects increasing frustration surrounding the U.S. and India relationship. Trump recently said he would impose an unspecified penalty on India if they didn’t cut their imports of Russian oil.

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