EU refused to put tariffs on India over Russian oil for ‘big trade deal’: Scott Bessant

“I will also point out that our virtue signalling European allies refused to do it because they wanted to sign this big trade deal with India,” said.

Bessent said that before the Ukraine invasion, Russian oil accounted for only 2 -3 per cent of India’s total oil imports but following the invasion the share of Russian oil in Indian refineries went up to 18-19 per cent, helping India make “huge profits”

“…but in the ultimate act of irony and stupidity, guess who was buying the refined products from the Indian refineries made from Russian oil ..the Europeans. They are financing the war against themselves,” Bessent said.

Apart from imposing additional tariffs on India, Washington has imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies — Rosneft and Lukoil — to damage Moscow’s ability to fund its war machine.

The European Union had also joined the US with more economic sanctions on Russia, as it unveiled the 19th package of sanctions. The EU’s 18th sanctions package against Russia, adopted on July 18, 2025, prohibits the import of petroleum products refined from Russian crude through third countries.

While the US has continued to impose punishing tariffs on India, India and the EU in the last six months made rapid progress, closing nearly 20 chapters out of 24 and aim to close negotiations next week.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham earlier this month said in a social media post that President Donald Trump has approved a “Russia sanctions Bill” that proposes 500 per cent tariffs on “all goods and services” imported from countries that “knowingly engage in the exchange” of Russian-origin “uranium and petroleum products”.

Official trade data showed that India’s imports from Russia have declined by over 18 per cent between April and October last year compared to the previous year, and New Delhi’s imports from Washington jumped 62 per cent during the same period.

Indian public sector refiners have signed a one-year deal for American liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) imports. Amid the Trump administration’s push for expansion of existing nuclear power plants and the development of small-scale reactors, India has opened its nuclear sector.

USTR Jamieson Greer in Washington, DC in December, during a Senate hearing in December, had said that the US had received the “best” offer from India, adding that India has been a “difficult nut to crack” owing to its resistance to importing American agricultural products.