The peculiar Trump policy play book for China, India and Russia

President Donald Trump is studying an unusual strategy: to court Russian president Vladimir Putin, setting fire to Beijing, everything while turning the screws in a nearby ally: India.

Although India is one of the first nations to participate in negotiations with the Trump administration, there are still no signs that sealing an agreement with the United States, New Delhi, is now also looking at a secondary rate of 25% or a “penalty” for its purchase of Russian oil that will enter into force at the end of this month.

The United States Secretary of the United States, Scott Besent, intensified criticism against India on Tuesday, accusing him of relying on cheap Russian oil imports and threatening to further increase tariffs on Indian goods.

“We have planned to increase rates in India: these are secondary tariffs to buy sanctioned Russian oil,” Besent told CNBC on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, the White House trade advisor, Peter Navarro, condemned the dependence of the Asian Russian oil giant as “opportunistic” and undermined international efforts to isolate the War Economy of Russia.

“India acts as a global compensation house for Russian oil, turning crude oil into high value exports while making Moscow the dollars it needs,” Navarro said in an opinion article for Financial Times.

Acute rhetoric threatens to unravel years of improving ties between Washington and New Delhi, with India saying that the United States was unfairly pointing to its Russian oil purchases.

“At this point, the world is getting used to Ad-Hoc forms and sometimes contradictory in which the Trump administration is chasing its agenda,” said Bert Hofman, professor at the Eastern Asia Institute at the National University of Singapore.

India has become a leading Russian oil buyer, which has been sold with a discount since some western nations rejected purchases and imposed restrictions on Russian exports due to the invasion of Ukraine from Moscow in Ukraine in 2022.

It was the second largest buyer of Russian oil, which imported 1.6 million barrels per day in the first half of this year, compared to 50,000 BPD in 2020, although it is still at 2 million imports of BPD in China, according to the administration of energy information of the United States. Washington has not placed secondary tariffs in China for its purchases of Russian oil.

India has reiterated that it was the US administration that had asked to buy Russian oil to keep the markets quiet, while pointing to the European Union and even the existing trade in the United States with Moscow.

The country has signed up for Washington, saying that the US continues to import uranium hexafluoruro for its nuclear industry, paladium for the electric vehicle industry, as well as fertilizers and chemicals in Russia. The US bilateral trade with Russia in 2024 stood at $ 5.2 billion, below almost $ 36 billion in 2021, they showed government data.

The bilateral trade between New Delhi and Moscow reached a record of $ 68.7 billion for the year that ended in March 2025. In comparison, the European Union trade with Russia was 67.5 billion euros ($ 78.1 billion) in 2024, while its service trade in 2023 was 17.2 billion euros, according to the data of the European Commission.

“India has been the victim of these pressure tactics that Trump’s administration is trying to carry out. Trump is clearly using tariffs as a pressure tactic against Russia,” said Michael Kugelman, director of the Institute of Asia in the southern Wilson Center, based in Washington, said the “Squawk Asia Cnbc box.”

Another factor that determines the American approach to India is that Trump feels “harmed”, on how Modi undermined his attempt to claim credit to play a role in the high the fire of India-Pakistan, Kugelman emphasized.

To Trump’s complaints joins the “lack of will of India for the lowest barriers” to exports of American agricultural products such as soybeans and corn, Kevin Chen Xian An, a member of the associated research at the School of International Studies of S. Rajaratnam appeared.

Trump’s true agenda has little to do with Washington’s declared objective to stop Moscow’s oil revenues, but extract leverage from commercial partners, according to several geopolitical experts.

“The general objective for the Trump Administration is to extract concessions from countries to determine some justification for raising trade taxes so that the Government can finance its fiscal reductions in the income of US citizens,” said Drew Thompson, the main member of RSIS.

“It is not based on foreign policy principles [but] On the policy of power and gain, “Thompson added.

Last week, Trump launched a red carpet to greet Putin on his first visit to the United States in approximately a decade, sharing a trip with him in the presidential limousine to the place.

While the meeting did not seem to have produced significant steps towards a high fire in Ukraine, an objective that the United States had established before the summit, but Trump described the meeting as “productive.”

Speaking in the Informative Joint News session after the conversations, Putin reiterated that “for the resolution of conflicts in Ukraine of being in the long term and durable, all the fundamental causes of the crisis … must be eliminated; all the legitimate concerns of Russia must be taken into account.”

Kirill Dmitriev, one of Putin’s main negotiators, acclaimed Monday’s conversations in Washington as an “important day of diplomacy”, emphasizing Moscow’s opposition to any high -fire in the short term high -term fire with Ukraine.

Trump is trying to “maximize her leverage … Pressing India and Russia through India”, to obtain a commercial agreement with the first and a high -fire pact with the second, said Matt Gertken, geopolitical strategist and the United States in BCA Research. This will eventually help promote the perspectives of Republicans in the next half -period elections, Gertken added.

While India faces tariffs pronounced for her purchases of Russian crude, China, who has remained the largest importer of Russian crude, has been saved from such levies. Trump said last Friday that he was not considering retaliation rates in China for buying Russian oil, but could consider it in two or three weeks.

China’s Russian oil purchases have increased to 46% of Russia’s general exports in the first half of this year, from 34% in 2022, according to the United States Energy Information Administration, followed by India, which imported around 36% of Russian supplies.

When asked about China’s role in Russian petroleum purchases, Besent suggested that Beijing imports were less heinous in the eyes of the Trump administration because it had already been a great buyer even before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Entering China can also reflect Trump’s desire not to sink a possible high profile summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the coming months and the conclusion of a durable commercial agreement, said Stephen Olson, a senior visiting fellow at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute.

Secondary tariffs in India may intend to be “a shot in the Arc de Russia” to show that the United States could increase the pressure by extending tariffs similar to China, if Russia is no more compatible, Olson added.

After weeks of growing tensions, Beijing and Washington agreed in May to suspend strong duties and loosen several punitive measures imposed in April, since both parties continued working to achieve a lasting agreement.

Beijing has taken advantage of its great mastery of rare land minerals, crucial for military and industrial use in its negotiations with Washington, maintaining strict control over critical mineral exports.

The relationship with China is complicated, and the Trump administration has not yet come out with “a clear and coherent policy towards China. Sometimes it seems to compete with China economically. Other times it seems that it wants to achieve some kind of understanding or a detainee,” Kugelman said.