Posted on 07/31/2025 11:56:42 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
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 and it is "most certainly a point of irritation" in New Delhi’s relationship with Washington, although not the only point of irritation.
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.
-snip-
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.
New Delhi argues that allowing cheaper, subsidised US farm goods into the country would harm the income of millions of small farmers.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at indiatoday.in ...
India is a member of BRICS.
Trump is having a temper tantrum. Twenty-five percent on India... but fifty percent on Lulu in Brazil because he (Trump) doesn’t like Lulu.
Brics is going to continue to give Trump the middle finger.
Trump has made it personal now. This is more of the problem on Trump personally running around the world conducting Tariff and Sanction Policy in front of the Media.
Trump is not going to stop the rise of India.
Trump is not going to stop Brics.
Trump is not going to break up Brics and defeat Russia in Ukraine.
Trump making it a personal function of power has lost all credibility. He can do damage, but this Country needs to get back to diplomacy. Cowboy politics by Trump using Tariffs and Sanctions will not bring Manufacturing back to the US.
TEMPER TARIFFS.
Trump has suffered Emotional Damage.
India is far too enmeshed in Western economies to lose access.
Brazil is the country of the future and always will be.
Russia is Nigeria with nukes, and its BRICS deals are only there because Putin is subordinating the Russian economy to the Ukraine War.
The only real power is China, and most of the BRICS deals are basically barter swaps denominated in each others currencies for specific products or basically renminbi for buying Chinese goods. It's COMECON II.
BRICS stronk like Medvedev!
You are a joke. Shut up loser.
Rubio has this wrong, though not in phrasing.
There are indeed other vendors of oil around the world India could place orders to. Of course, those other vendors all have current customers. Backstabbing those customers in order to sell to India, would just send those current customers to the vendor India left — i.e. Russia.
Then there are the complexities of blends. Russia’s flow to India is NOT Urals. It is Asia-Pacific blend, out of Sakhalin. The constituent ratios of diesel/kerosene vs gasoline tends to be richer than KSA or UAE.
But regardless of the complexities, it is a world of oil scarcity. Last year global consumption lists as exceeding global production. There will always be a customer for supply. And . . . if there is not . . . that just means the asset stays underground until . . . whatever, higher prices, desperation from buyers, whatever.
Agreed about China, and China is in trouble because they’ve lost sight about what laid their golden egg, in their leadership’s quest to regain more of a command economy (than the command economy they already have.)
Agreed about China, and China is in trouble because they’ve lost sight about what laid their golden egg, in their leadership’s quest to regain more of a command economy (than the command economy they already have.)
25k per h1b visa and student visa from India (add China to that list too)
Tell India they can start by getting out of BRICS.
Trump hasn’t made it personal enough. Time to send Modi’s guest workers back on a chutney-greased rail. Time to tariff:
- outsourcing
- software development
Throw in 25% tax on remittances.
The idea should be to get all of Russia’s significant oil customers and potential customers engaged in a reverse cartel. Drive the price of Russian oil down to where Russia only breaks even / makes no profit. That way the oil supply is not reduced, because Russia can’t afford to actually embargo oil.
Of course, herding cats would be easier...
One other point is that a few countries like Saudi Arabia DO have spare production capacity, tho’ it is not likely to their direct advantage to use it.
Reading some comments on another forum the India people are not happy with Trump, seriously not happy.
Eff India.
KSA’s spare capacity has been the subject of debate, definition, and outright doubt for about 20 years now.
It goes a bit like this. “Ghawar now has 98% water drive! It is finally dying, after 70 years of output!”
Except that most oil fields have a water/oil ratio above 90%. And Aramco are the pinnacle technology of the world when it comes to pumping seawater into the ground to force up oil.
So what is their capacity without that seawater drive? Probably 0. Which doesn’t matter because they CAN pump seawater into the ground and maintain 10 million bpd output.
In an overall sense, excess capacity comes from above ground storage. Large circular tanks. There are moments when they can bring oil out of the ground AND add it to oil coming out of tanks, and hit 12 million bpd. But does that really count? The tank will drain in a few weeks. Then it’s back to 10 mbpd. So was “capacity” 12 mbpd? Nah. But this is how the game is played.
The numbers are the numbers. India consumes 5 million bpd (2024). That’s up 5% from 2023. They produce 700-800K bpd domestically and perpetually plan to increase that to 1.5 mbpd. Perpetually as in, this has been the plan for over 10 years. Instead, geology has taken them down 150K bpd over that time.
So they import 4ish and half from the Russians. It’s all on tankers. No pipelines external. Pakistan to the west, Himalayas to the north. East is mostly water. Russia’s exports are about 7 million bpd. Even if you could slash all 2, which you can’t, it would not stop anything.
Russia is the wrong enemy to have. Their land mass ensures their oil outlasts everyone else. When the day comes we beg for some, why should they say yes?
If Brics were meaningless, why would over 50 countries have membership interest or applications in various stages of approval.
Biden/Blinken should hang for their failures in diplomacy allowing Brics to rise challenging world wide USD based trade.
US won’t be able to afford much Freedom of the Seas Navigation Rights, or the right to float the Navy on certail coastlines in that role, as funds dry up.
Two thirds of the world’s populaton are going to be int he Brics footprint.
Brics nations are not “weual’ trading partners with the West, but they are more closly aligned in current economic economy and costs to find favorable trade among themselves.
The US will have to live with a shrinking piece of the global footprint. We have done it to ourselves with Swift, Sanctions, Seizures and threats.
Too much babble. They import about 2 from the Russians. 4 in total.
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