US President Frustrated With India Buying Russian Oil : US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
New Delhi : US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday that India’s purchases of Russian oil are helping to sustain Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine. In an interview with Fox Radio, Rubio claimed that the US President is frustrated with the fact that India continues to buy oil from Russia despite having so many other oil vendors available and helping to fund Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.
India has huge energy needs and that includes the ability to buy oil and coal and gas and things that it needs to power its economy like every country does, and it buys it from Russia, because Russian oil is sanctioned and cheap. In many cases, they’re selling it under the global price because of the sanctions, said Rubio.
Unfortunately, that is helping to sustain the Russian war effort. So it is most certainly a point of irritation in our relationship with India – not the only point of irritation, the US Secretary of State added. One of the biggest points of contradiction that has stopped India and the US from signing a trade deal is India’s firm resistance to opening up its agriculture and dairy sectors, while the US is pushing for greater access to India’s agricultural market, particularly for GM crops, dairy, and products like corn, soybeans, apples, almonds, and ethanol. They have been insisting on tariff reductions in these sensitive sectors.
India has told the US that reducing tariffs on dairy, rice, wheat, and genetically modified (GM) crops like corn and soybeans is not possible right now. According to officials, such a step could hurt over 700 million rural people, including around 80 million small dairy farmers. The US is also pushing for better access to the Indian market across a wide range of products other than agricultural and dairy products.
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