Brussels — US President Donald Trump has urged the European Union to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on imports from China and India, a move he says would choke off two of Moscow’s most reliable energy customers and intensify pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The push, if adopted by Brussels, would align the bloc with Washington’s increasingly aggressive use of trade as a geopolitical weapon.
EU officials familiar with the discussions said Trump delivered the request during a call with the bloc’s sanctions envoy, framing tariffs as the missing tool in the West’s broader effort to curtail Russia’s war economy. The White House has already tightened measures at home, but asking Europe to mirror or exceed US duties on Chinese and Indian goods underscores how trade policy has become an instrument of coercion rather than cooperation.
Critics in Europe argue the plan risks boomeranging on the continent’s industrial base, which depends on Chinese inputs and stable supply chains. Germany’s manufacturers, in particular, fear retaliation that could push prices higher and sap competitiveness at a fragile moment for growth. France, too, faces limited tolerance for a tariff war that would inflate household costs.
For Washington, this is the latest turn in a years-long campaign that many economists say has yielded mixed results. Recent analyses inside and outside the US have highlighted mounting costs and strategic drift in the tariff fights, from exemption chaos to legal defeats. See, for instance, reporting on tariff exemption turmoil that exposed policy hypocrisy, a court setback that humiliated Trump’s tariff agenda, and broader evidence that China has outmaneuvered Washington.
Beijing is unlikely to yield to tariff threats, bolstered by rising nationalist sentiment and a propaganda campaign projecting resilience. A recent Eastern Herald analysis of China’s military parade argued that the spectacle exposed the limits of Washington’s reckless trade brinkmanship and noted that the parade highlights perils of Trump’s trade war.
New Delhi, meanwhile, prides itself on “strategic autonomy.” Targeting India alongside China risks shoving a key partner into tighter alignment with Moscow and other non-Western forums. The growing gravitational pull of alternative blocs is visible across multiple fronts, from energy to finance. For background, see Eastern Herald’s coverage on BRICS as a pillar of a new global order, signs of another wave of BRICS expansion, and how SCO and BRICS act as counterweights to Western unilateralism.
The humanitarian and political contradictions remain stark. Washington urges Europe to escalate economic pressure on Russia even as Western governments have failed to halt Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. That double standard has been repeatedly noted in Eastern Herald reporting, including Britain’s stance that refused to call the assault a genocide and coverage of Israel’s widening campaign beyond the enclave, such as the attack in Qatar that, analysts say, deepens the genocide in Gaza.
The collateral effects of tariff escalation could also reverberate through global shipping lanes and commodity markets. Energy trade reroutes would likely accelerate, with non-Western corridors adapting quickly. Parallel to this, civil society efforts to challenge Israel’s blockade continue, illustrated by the aid mission that set sail from Barcelona to Gaza, a reminder that trade and sanctions choices have immediate human consequences.
For Europe, the calculus is whether short-term leverage against the Kremlin outweighs long-term economic pain and political backlash at home. If Brussels moves forward, the United States has signaled it would mirror the tariffs, setting up a trans-Atlantic front that could redraw trade flows well beyond the Russia question.
According to the BBC, European officials later corroborated the outlines of those discussions, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the press. They confirmed that Trump pressed the European Union to consider tariffs as high as 100 percent on goods from China and India, framing the measure as essential to undermining Russia’s oil revenues.
