Depending on the outcome of President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s planned meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025, the Trump administration may impose additional secondary tariffs on India, according to a warning from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
This comes after the Trump administration recently imposed a 50% tariff on Indian imports, comprising a 25% base duty and an extra 25% levy that targets India’s purchases of Russian arms and oil. The United States claims that Moscow’s war in Ukraine is indirectly funded by India’s purchases of Russian crude oil.
Bessent described India as “a bit recalcitrant” in trade negotiations and said in appearances with Fox News and Bloomberg TV that if the Trump-Putin talks do not produce favorable outcomes, the present secondary tariffs on India may increase.
These tariffs are seen by the US as a means of exerting pressure on Russia to halt the conflict in Ukraine. In order to increase the leverage against Russia, he urged European nations to “put on these secondary sanctions” and chastised them for being reluctant to follow the US in enforcing secondary sanctions against countries such as India.
India has defended its oil imports as essential to the country’s energy security and referred to the US levies as “unfair, unjustified, and unreasonable.” India is the world’s largest buyer of seaborne Russian crude. Citing the need to provide its people with inexpensive energy, India has dramatically increased its imports of Russian oil since the start of the conflict in Ukraine.
India is anticipated to maintain its stance on safeguarding its dairy and agricultural industries, which continue to be major grounds of contention in bilateral negotiations, while trade talks between the US and India have already halted.
The goal of the next Trump-Putin summit is to talk about methods to put an end to the four-year-old war in Ukraine. President Trump has threatened “severe consequences” if Russia rejects a peace agreement and characterized the meeting as a “feel-out” to gauge Putin’s willingness to discuss a truce.
Trump’s contentious proposal of “some swapping of territories” as part of a peace deal has been sharply rejected by Ukraine, which maintains that no agreement can be reached without Kyiv’s involvement and that no Ukrainian territory will be given up.
Concerns have been raised by European officials that an agreement favoring Russian goals could emerge from direct negotiations between Trump and Putin, omitting Ukraine, further complicating the global diplomatic situation.
On August 25, two days before the 50% duty on Indian goods is scheduled to go into effect, US negotiators are anticipated to travel to India, potentially to renew talks. However, significant progress on the controversial trade problems is uncertain given the prevailing positions.
Based largely on the results of the Trump-Putin summit and wider international cooperation, especially from European allies, the US is using tariffs and possible sanctions as tools to influence India’s Russian oil trade and to put pressure on Russia diplomatically and economically.
