Trump asks India to stop Russian oil imports, but doesn’t raise topic with Xi despite China buying ‘a lot’
US President Donald Trump on Thursday met Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, for the first time since 2019. The “amazing meeting” resulted in a slash in tariffs announced against Beijing earlier and a key rare earths deal between the US and China. “It was an amazing meeting,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One shortly after he left Busan, ranking the talks a “12 out of 10”.
Russian oil: A topic that stood out due to its absence
A key highlight of meeting was a topic that was conspicuous due to its absence. Trump has never let go of an opportunity to claim that buying oil from Russia has prolonged the war in Ukraine. On a number of occasions, Trump and his aides have directly blamed India for “funding Russia’s war”.
After the meeting, the US President said that Washington and China agreed to work together on the Ukraine issue, and the war “came up strongly” during their talks. “We talked about it for a long time, and we’re both going to work together to see if we can get something,” he said, reported The Guardian.
Story continues below this ad
While Trump acknowledged that China buys “a lot” of Russian oil, he added that the topic was not really discussed.
When Trump & Co attacked India over Russian oil
While Trump slashed the tariffs on China 10 percentage points on Sunday despite Beijing buying Russian oil, the US President earlier this month reiterated that India will continue to pay “massive” tariffs for their oil trade with Moscow.
“I spoke with Prime Miner Modi of India, and he said he’s not going to be doing the Russian oil thing,” Trump had said on October 20, while aboard Air Force One.
Asked about India’s assertion that it was not aware of any conversation between Modi and Trump, Trump replied, “But if they want to say that, then they’ll just continue to pay massive tariffs, and they don’t want to do that.”Story continues below this ad
Trump even imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian imports for buying oil from India.
In September this year, Donald Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro termed India’s purchase of Russian oil as “blood money”, alleging that New Delhi didn’t buy from Moscow in such great amounts before the Ukraine conflict began.
In a series of X posts, Navarro said, “Fact: India didn’t buy Russian oil in large quantities before Russia invaded Ukraine. It’s blood money and people are dying.”
China rewarded despite being the ‘largest buyers of Russian oil’
Trump’s move to slash tariffs against China is quite puzzling. While Trump slapped the additional 25% tariffs on India for buying oil from Russia, it reduced tariffs against china despite it being the largest oil customer of Russia.
Moscow | During a press briefing, External Affairs Miner Dr S Jaishankar says, “…We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian oil, that is China. We are not the biggest purchasers of LNG, that is the European Union. We are not the country which has the biggest trade surge… pic.twitter.com/pbH06HtTwK
— ANI (@ANI) August 21, 2025
External Affairs Miner S Jaishankar had pointed out in August that “we are not the biggest purchasers of Russian oil; that is China”. Jaishankar has on multiple occasions pointed out that the European Union had a much larger volume of trade with Russia than India and yet it was New Delhi, which was being penalised for the same.
