In an opinion piece for the Financial Times, Navarro — a close confidant of US President Donald Trump — claimed India had become a “global clearing house” for Russian crude, refining discounted oil and reselling it abroad while allowing Russia to pocket badly needed foreign currency.

White House counsellor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro has accused India of enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine by acting as a “global clearinghouse” for Russian oil, while continuing to block American exports with high tariffs.

In his op-ed, Navarro reiterated the claim that India's purchase of Russian oil were funding the Russia-Ukraine war.

India and China are aware of the “very high political, economic and military cost of frozen relations,” he says. “China felt it had pushed India too close to the U.S. while India realized that it was losing its vaunted strategic autonomy by getting too close to Washington and turning Beijing into an adversary.”

In an opinion piece published in the Financial Times, Navarro severely criticised Delhi’s buying of oil from Moscow. India's purchases of Russian crude were funding Moscow's war in Ukraine and has to stop, he wrote.

Bessent’s remarks come on the heels of a scathing op-ed by White House adviser Peter Navarro in the Financial Times, accusing India’s energy giants of funneling profits from Russian oil “into Vladimir Putin’s war chest.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said on Thursday that the Trump administration is likely to levy tariffs on pharmaceutical imports under a "Section 232" trade investigation because it's "very clear that we have a national security crisis" due to U.S. reliance on foreign producers in the sector.