In what could be a big development in the ongoing tariff trouble across the globe, the finance ministers of the G7 nations are reportedly scheduled to meet on Friday to decide secondary sanctions on India and China for buying Russian oil, a report said. This comes after US President Donald Trump talked to senior European officials to impose more tariffs to pressurise Russia to agree for Ukraine peace talks.
In the call, the Group of Seven nations will also discuss the potential use of immobilised Russian assets, reported Bloomberg citing people in knowledge of the development. It stated that Trump has apparently asked the EU officials to impose sweeping tariffs on India and China to push President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table with Ukraine.
The US President asked the officials to do so in a meeting in Washington this week and said the US would be willing to mirror tariffs imposed by Europe on either country, Bloomberg earlier reported .
Why the new sanctions?
The G7 group includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The proposal of more sanctions is not the easy one though as countries, like Hungary, have blocked more stringent restrictions targeting Russia’s energy sector. Any decision of this level would require the backing of all member states, the report added.
Notably, this comes as his deadline for Putin to hold a bilateral meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy passed without indication of whether he was genuinely interested in engaging in the talks. Especially after the two leaders met in Alaska last month.
On the other hand, Russia has intensified bombings in Ukraine further infuriating Trump. Bloomberg stated that The Financial Times earlier reported on the Friday call.
Trump vs India-China-Russia
US President Trump has employed the method of sanctions and tariffs to force nations to take steps that favour his ideology of ‘Make America Great Again (MAGA)’. He initially put a baseline tariffs of 10% on imports from all the countries, and raised this further as per the trade relations of countries with the US.
While tariffs cross 100% on China, later to be reduced, the tensions only went upward. He then imposed 25% tariffs on India and later levied additional 25% as a penalty for buying Russian oil.
Trump’s administration has said multiple times that India and China’s business with Russia is aiding the latter’s actions in Ukraine, a war Trump has been pressing to end to increase his chances of getting a Nobel peace prize.
PM Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin recently met at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisatipn (SCO) summit. The meeting made the US go soft on India as Trump said that America has lost “India and Russia to deepest, darkest China”.
