White House holds back on sanctions as Steve Witkoff meets Kremlin officials…reports Asian Lite News
US President Donald Trump said he would wait for the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting in Moscow between Russian leaders and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, before deciding on punitive tariffs targeting buyers of Russian oil.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday afternoon, he said, “We have a meeting with Russia tomorrow. We’re going to see what happens, we’ll make that determination, at that time”.
On Tuesday morning, Trump warned that he would impose heavy tariffs on India within the next 24 hours, but his afternoon statement, while talking to reporters, appeared to indicate that he may hold off on the threat if there was movement on the talks to end the Ukraine War.
Reminded by a reporter of his threat to impose 100 per cent tariffs on countries buying Russian oil, the US president denied it.
“I never said a percentage, but we’ll be doing quite a bit of that”, he said.
But on July 14, he said that “if we don’t have a deal in 50 days”, the tariffs on oil buyers known as secondary tariffs “will be at 100 per cent”.
He has since cut the 50-day deadline to 12 days, which will end this week.
In his morning interview with CNBC, Trump also claimed India would offer zero tariffs on imports from the US.
“India went from the highest tariffs ever (to) they will give us zero tariffs, and they can go in”, he said. “But that’s not good enough because of what they’re doing with oil, not good”.
Therefore, he said, he would add the punitive tariffs to the 25 per cent he announced last week.
Trump, speaking to reporters after signing an executive order on a task force for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, repeated his claim that he had stopped five wars in five months, and he would like the Ukraine War to be the sixth.
“I stopped within a matter of days, almost every one of them, including India and Pakistan”, he said.
During his election campaign, Trump had said that he would end the Ukraine War within 24 hours, and it rankles him that Putin has taken a hardline and thwarted his efforts, which at one time was putting pressure on Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
India is caught in the crossfire, and Trump is trying to pressure Russia economically with threats against India, which buys 70 per cent of its oil exports.
Trump appointed Witcoff as his special envoy for the Middle East, but he has deployed him to work with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to find an end to the Ukraine War.
Witcofff’s latest trip to Moscow has been described as a last chance for Russia to respond to Trump’s demand to end the war or face more sanctions on that country as well as on countries that buy oil from it.
Coincidentally, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval is now in Moscow for consultations with Russian officials that had been planned before the Trump punitive tariff threats.
Although the European Union and the US trade with Russia, and several countries, including China and Turkey, buy oil from it, Trump has singled out India for his ire. He accused India of helping fuel Russia’s war machine by pumping in cash for oil purchases.
He asserted that India was reselling products made from Russian oil to other countries at a high profit.
India has defended the purchases as an economic necessity for the country rather than support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.
An External Affairs Ministry statement said that singling out India was “unjustified and unreasonable”.
EU’s trade with Russia was estimated at $67.5 billion last year, and the US “continues to import from Russia uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilisers as well as chemicals”, it said.
