US president urges EU to place 100pc secondary tariffs on India and China to increase pressure on Moscow
Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Russia, as Putin continues to bombard Ukrainian cities
Cameron Henderson US Reporter
September 2025
Donald Trump has told European allies to impose sweeping tariffs on Russia’s trading partners, pledging the US will follow suit if they do.
The president urged the EU to place 100 per cent secondary sanctions on India and China in order to ramp up pressure on Moscow, according to a report.
Mr Trump is said to have made the request during a call in which officials were discussing ways to force Vladimir Putin to strike a peace deal with Ukraine.
“We’re ready to go, ready to go right now, but we’re only going to do this if our European partners step up with us,” one US official told The Financial Times.
A second official said Washington would “mirror” sanctions placed on India and China by the EU, raising the prospect of further hiking American import taxes on goods from both countries.
The proposal is likely to aggravate tensions between the US and India, after Mr Trump slapped the country with a 25 per cent punitive tariff for buying Russian oil, bringing the total levies on India goods to 50 per cent.
In response, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, allegedly ducked phone calls from the president, according to The New York Times, and attended China’s president Xi Jinping’s military parade in Beijing, alongside Putin and Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.
Following the parade – China’s biggest display of force ever – Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social that India and Russia had been “lost” to “deepest, darkest, China”.
Mr Trump has in recent weeks grown increasingly frustrated with Moscow, as Putin continues to bombard Ukrainian cities despite US efforts to forge a peace agreement.
Following Russia’s heaviest strikes on Ukraine since the war began on Sunday, the US president said he was “not happy” and suggested he was ready to move into a “second phase” of punishing Moscow, without going into detail.
The White House has stepped up its rhetoric against Putin, with Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, suggesting that EU sanctions on countries buying Russian oil could cause the country’s economy to enter “total collapse”.
“We are in a race now between how long can the Ukrainian military hold up, versus how long can the Russian economy hold up,” he told NBC.
A US official confirmed the strategy, saying the president’s plan is to impose “dramatic tariffs” to stop China buying Russian oil.
The official told The Financial Times: “The president came on this morning and his view is that the obvious approach here is, let’s all put on dramatic tariffs and keep the tariffs on until the Chinese agree to stop buying the oil. There really aren’t many other places that oil can go.”
The White House was approached for comment.
Comment from :
Marge Simpson
We really must ban travel of all Russian passport holders to the west! This includes students and children of the rich going to school!
Anthony Mayer
Reply to Marge Simpson
And tennis players or Olympics as well. Total ban (except for documented refugees from this reta*rd 19th century Russkie regime a la putain).
David Tarsh
If Trump really was keen on peace, he would do more to help put Ukraine in a strong enough position militarily that Russia starts to lose ground significantly. Because then Russia would see it its own military chances dramatically reduced and it would have more to gain by negotiating.
Andrew Atrens
Honestly. Whatever, Donald.
What Mr. Trump doesn’t acknowledge is that he’s made zero changes to the sanctions that Biden and co put in place and in fact has fired the team of experts that were responsible for tuning them and keeping them locked in while Russia continuously dodges and dekes and tries to find ways through and around them. The result is that the current set of US measures are now practically speaking, useless.
If one didn’t know any better they might think that this was by design. But what’s that old saying? Never attribute to malice something that can be readily explained as simple incompetence.
Mike Monk
Didn’t Trump say he would increase sanctions against Russia several weeks ago?… We are still waiting Donald, and while you procrastinate or renege people are getting killed!
These idiots still think of a peace deal. Unbelievable. I wish the “greatest generation” was around especially when the world needs leadership not “lip service.”
Only a few Western politicians know that the only viable and lasting peace deal involves the defeat of the mafia state.
Never trust what taco says. He’s a pathological liar.