Name: Trump says India agreed to stop buying Russian oil | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-02-03T17:14:36.000Z
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US President Donald Trump says he's cutting tariffs on Indian goods as part of a trade deal.

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated the agreement at a general meeting of his alliance in New Delhi.

Trump says Modi has promised to spend $500 billion on US products, including aircraft and petroleum.

In return, the US will lower levies on Indian goods from 50 to 18%.

Trump claims India has agreed to stop buying Russian exchange, but the Kremlin denies that.

Now our special correspondent Nimisha Jaswal is in daily for us.

Nimisha, what's actually then been agreed upon so far?

Well, Gerhard, even now most of our details seem to be coming from those two social media posts both President Trump and Prime Minister Modi have put out.

Now President Trump in his post said, acknowledged his great friendship with Modi, said that these to our men who get things done and said that he had agreed to a request from Modi to lower the reciprocal tariff from 25% to 18% on Modi's request.

And as a consequence of three things that Trump spells out, the fact that India has agreed to stop buying Russian oil, that India will buy goods worth $500 billion from the U.S.

keep in mind that last year's trade balance between the two countries, trade volume between the two countries was about 130 billion and that India has agree reduce its tariffs to zero, both trade trade barriers as well as non trade barriers.

Now Modi's post on X was a lot more muted.

He thanked President Trump on behalf of 1.4 billion Indians.

He said that this is really important for the relationship between the two countries.

The markets have soared as has the rupee.

And the media here is covering this as both a big win for Modi.

They say that the US Blinked first when it got worried about the India EU trade deal that just got passed last week.

But others are also saying that this is a of Modi caving to Trump's pressure to back away from Russia.

will India really make a big switch from Russian oil to US Oil?

Now it's important to reiterate that India has not confirmed this in the post from Modi that I just spoke about.

None of the points that Trump outlined were confirmed or acknowledged and this is still true almost a day later.

Russia also has said that it has heard nothing from India about imports changing.

But even as India defends its right to energy security, every time the stock of tariffs comes up, we have seen a dip in Indian imports already.

So it might not be that big a switch given that Indian imports from Russia have dropped consistently since October last year as much as 29% month on month.

But even now data analysis shows that Russia even with this big dip is the top supplier of of oil for India ahead of Gulf countries and the US on fifth position.

So it doesn't really look like even Venezuela's that Trump put out can actually bridge that gap because India relies on Russia quite heavily.

Now very briefly if you can please can Modi you think keep both Trump and Putin happy?

Well with Putin there continues to be a strategic special relationship as India and Russia say and Russia is India's biggest arms supplier.

But Modi did say that he appreciates Trump's leadership when it comes to global peace.

This may well be a nod to Trump's insistence that the Ukraine war needs to end and Russia's funds need to be reduced.

Nimisha Jaswal there reporting from Delhi.