Donald Trump has urged the European Union to hit India and China with tariffs of up to 100 per cent as part of a strategy to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters quoted a US official and an EU
diplomat as saying.
The US President’s request was conveyed via a conference call to EU sanctions envoy David O’Sullivan and other EU officials. The EU delegation is currently in Washington to discuss sanctions coordination, it was known.
According to the report, the EU diplomat said the United States had indicated it was willing to impose similar tariffs if the European Union heeded America’s request.
The US request, if heeded, would result in a change of strategy for the EU, which has preferred to isolate Russia with sanctions rather than tariffs.
China and India are major purchasers of Russian oil, and Trump has frequently threatened to impose tariffs on India and China as punishment for their purchases of Russian crude, even after a 25 per cent tariff on India as a ‘penalty’.
At times, he has complained that Europe itself has not fully decoupled from Russia, which supplied about 19 per cent of EU gas imports last year although the bloc says it is committed to fully ending its dependency on Russian energy.
