FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump talks to the press on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington, U.S., September 7, 2025.
Annabelle Gordon | Reuters
U.S. President Donald Trump has asked the European Union to hit China and India with tariffs of up to 100% over the countries’ Russia oil purchases, in a move aimed at turning up the heat on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.
The proposal, first reported by the Financial Times, was confirmed to CNBC’s Megan Cassella by two sources familiar with the matter.
Trump made the request when he was called into a meeting with senior U.S. and EU officials in Washington, the Financial Times reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the discussion. Washington was also prepared to “mirror” any tariffs imposed by Europe on the two countries, the report said.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comments.
The U.S. has imposed a punitive 25% tariff on imports from India over New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil, taking the total duties to as high as 50%. India has said the tariffs are “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable,” while calling out the U.S. and the EU’s trade with Russia.
The EU’s bilateral trade with Russia stood at 67.5 billion euros ($78.1 billion) in 2024, while its services trade in 2023 was at 17.2 billion euros, according to European Commission data.
Data from the Indian embassy in Moscow showed bilateral trade between New India and Russia reached a record $68.7 billion for the year ended March 2025, nearly 5.8 times higher than the pre-pandemic trade of $10.1 billion.
China, the biggest purchaser of Russian oil, has so far been spared from the “secondary” tariffs, after securing a truce with Washington to reduce the new levies on its products to 30%.
Trump’s proposal comes as his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last month has yielded little progress toward securing a ceasefire in Ukraine. After the meeting, Putin told reporters in a joint press conference with Trump that the “root causes” of the conflict needed to be addressed for a sustainable peace.
“There were many, many points that we agreed on … I would say a couple of big ones that we haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” Trump said after Putin’s remarks last month, without elaborating.
While Washington’s quest to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine has come to naught, Putin appears to have cemented his ties with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their meeting at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Beijing last week.
In a post on X Tuesday night stateside, Trump said the U.S. and India have resumed trade negotiations to address trade barriers. Calling Modi a “very good friend,” the president said he was “certain that there will be no difficulty in coming to a successful conclusion.”
Washington’s negotiations with China appear to be struggling to reach a breakthrough, with a late-August visit to Washington by top Chinese trade negotiator Li Chenggang yielding little progress.