The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, at the Elysee Palace with French President Emmanuel Macron and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, during the official visit that the Beijing leader made in France in May 2024, photo: Abaca Press / Alamy / Profimedia Images
US President Donald Trump has asked the European Union to impose up to 100% customs taxes against China and India because of their Russian oil acquisitions, in a movement meant to intensify Moscow pressure to end the Ukraine, CNBC reports.
The proposal, revealed for the first time by the Financial Times on Monday night, was confirmed for the CNBC financial television by two familiar sources with the subject.
Trump made this request when he participated in Washington in a meeting between senior American and European officials, according to FT. He also showed the availability for the US to adopt any customs taxes imposed by Europe against the two countries.
The White House did not respond immediately to the CNBC request to comment.
At the end of July, the US imposed a 25% punitive customs fee on American imports from India, justifying the measure through Russian oil acquisitions made by New Delhi. After this measure, the total level of the US customs duties for India imports climbed 50%.
India has said that American customs duties are “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable”, accusing the US and EU of making trade with Russia.
EU countries still have billions of dollars with Russia
The EU's bilateral trade with Russia amounted to 67.5 billion euros in 2024, according to the data of the European Commission.
The data of the Embassy of India in Moscow have shown that bilateral trade between India and Russia reached a record level of $ 68.7 billion for the year ended in March 2025, almost 5.8 times higher than the commercial exchanges before the pandemic, which amounted to $ 10.1 billion.
China, the largest Russian oil buyer, has so far been exempted from Washington's “secondary” customs duties, after reaching an agreement with the Trump administration to reduce new taxes to 30%.
The proposal made by Trump to the European Union on imposing customs duties against China and India took place in the context in which his meeting last month in Alaska with Russian President Vladimir Putin led to a few progress in order to cease fire in Ukraine.
After the meeting, Putin told reporters, in a joint press conference with Trump, that he needs to approach the “deep causes” of the conflict for a sustainable peace.
“There were very, many points on which I agreed … I would say that there are a few big ones that I have not yet arrived there, but I made progress,” said Trump after Putin, without going into details in the press conference with his Russian counterpart.
Trump has meanwhile announced the resumption of commercial negotiations with India
CNBC notes that, while Washington's attempt to intermediate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine has not given results, little seems to have strengthened their links with Chinese President XI Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their last week's meeting at the Shanghai cooperation organization meeting.
“It seems that I lost India and Russia in favor of the deepest, dark China. To have a long and prosperous future together!” Trump wrote on September 5 in a message distributed on his social network Truth Social, published with a photo with President XI Jinping, Narendra Modimi and Vladimir Putin.
But in a new message published on Tuesday evening on the social network “X”, Trump said the US and India resumed negotiations to eliminate commercial barriers. By calling Modi “a very good friend”, the US president said he is “convinced that there will be no difficulty in reaching a successful conclusion.”
In contrast, Washington's negotiations with China to develop the details of the previously agreed agreement on reducing mutual customs taxes seem to be difficult in reaching important progress.
