United States President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would increase the tariff charged on imports from India from the current rate of 25 per cent “very substantially” over the next 24 hours, given India’s continued purchases of Russian oil.

“India has not been a good trading partner, because they do a lot of business with us, but we don’t do business with them. So we settled on 25pc but I think I’m going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they’re buying Russian oil,” he told CNBC in a televised interview.

“They’re fuelling the war machine, and if they’re going to do that, then I’m not going to be happy,” Trump said, adding that the main sticking point with India was that its tariffs were too high.

He did not provide a new tariff rate for India.

Trump last week said he would impose a 25pc tariff on goods imported from India and added that the world’s fifth-largest economy would also face an unspecified penalty, but gave no details. Later, Trump mou­nted a sharp attack and said: “I don’t care what India does with Russia. They can take their dead economies down together, for all I care.”

Over the weekend,........

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