US threats of tariffs against India and China failing, says Russia

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the US threats of tariffs against India and China are failing, and there is a growing understanding in Washington of the futility of talking in such language with two ancient civilisations.”Both China and India are ancient civilisations. And talking to them like ‘either you stop doing what I don’t like or I’ll impose tariffs on you’ won’t work. And the ongoing contacts between Beijing and Washington, between New Delhi and Washington, show that the American side understands it, too,” Lavrov said while speaking in ‘The Great Game’ programme of Russia’s main Channel 1 TV.

He pointed to the reaction of New Delhi and Beijing to the US demands.

“Besides the fact that this undermines the economic well-being of those countries, it at least creates very serious difficulties for them, forcing them to seek new markets, new sources of energy supplies, (and) forcing them to pay higher prices. But beyond this, and perhaps even more importantly than this, there is a moral and political opposition to this approach,” he added.Amid threats of new sanctions on Russia, Lavrov said he does not see any problem.

“Frankly speaking, I don’t see any problem with the new sanctions imposed on Russia. An enormous amount of sanctions, unprecedented for that period, were imposed during President Donald Trump’s first term,” he said.

“We have started to draw a conclusion from the situation when the West imposed these sanctions. Later, during President Joe Biden’s term, sanctions were used as a replacement for any diplomatic effort. There was no search for a compromise,” Lavrov said.