“Singling out India brought Putin to Alaska.”
Not true. India exports to the U.S. are barely 1.2% of India’s GDP, but India’s oil imports from Russia are more than a third of Indian oil imports. The U.S. is more dependent on imports from India than is India in need of imports from the U.S.
India could say “go ahead and impose your 50% tariff” and its GDP would not suffer greatly. It has market alternatives in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Whaa?
Witkoff’s visit to Moscow carrying an offer, that the Kremlin accepted, is what brought Putin to Alaska.
As for Indian oil, when one says 35% of Indian imports are Russian oil, and it used to be <1%, then India used to be getting oil from somewhere else.
That somewhere else is now supplying more to Europe, who used to buy direct from Russia.
And here is the key point. That somewhere else can’t just say, okay, we’ll go back to supplying India AND ALSO Europe.
There is no magic. There is only so much oil flowing out of the ground, and there is a growing amount of oil burned and flowing into the air. When the reality is scarcity, you can’t eliminate 6+% of the source and expect that to work.
Oh, and to make it worse? India’s domestic oil production is about 900K barrels/day. Down from the previous year and the one before that and that and that.
People somehow don’t see the math. They HAVE to buy oil. In this case to Transship to Europe because for whatever reason Europe wants to pay more for what they HAVE to buy than they would pay direct to Russia.
There is no discretion. Oil is life. Don’t buy it, you don’t transport food.
The US can. Also tell India it can educate its own population or maybe use some Chinese schools. That would immediately get MAGA to back being hard to Russia. Kill all H1Bs to India and I bet you even MTG would back sending all the weapons Ukraine wants. The US doesn’t need India but more importantly the U.S doesn’t WANT the relationship they currently have with India. The Globalist want it and Trump can play really loose with India because his base is 100% with him on this one.