I'd love to hear more conspiracies about how Trump is Putin's puppet, wouldn't you?
President Trump has placed a 50% "Super Tariff" on India because their country will not get off Russian oil and flirting with the Russian-backed BRICS currency initiative to circumvent the U.S. dollar.
This comes after Prime Minister Modi of India has been reportedly stonewalling Trump for weeks.
Here's more from Breitbart:
India, which was already operating under a 25 per cent tariff as of earlier this month, has had an additional 25 per cent punishment rate for being a major customer of Indian oil activated overnight.
This means India has one of the highest tariff rates of any country in the world for its insistence on buying cheap oil, despite warnings. India's rate is level with Brazil, which was handed a 50 per cent rate in response to political persecution of conservatives in the country.
This could cause major disruptions to the Indian economy. Here's a chart showing which industries will be hit the hardest:
(Did you know that a bunch of the shrimp you buy from the store come from the waters around India?)
The Trump admin has also cited the war in Ukraine as a reason for the tariffs, arguing that India's purchase of Russian oil is funding the Russian war machine.
India, however, maintains that it doesn't care about the Ukraine war, just cheap oil.
India's ambassador to Russia said last week that its purchases of oil were purely guided by economics and they would buy oil wherever they got 'the best deal'. While bullish on the face of it, these comments may suggest there is plenty of space for Trump's tariffs to actually work, given a 50 per cent levy on one of India's largest export destinations will massively change the equation for whether Russian oil really is good value for money from a holistic perspective.
Meanwhile India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he will be slashing taxes and red tape domestically for small businesses and consumers to help cushion the blow of U.S. sanctions, the BBC reports.
We'll see what happens next!
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