‘India is big boy, not schoolchild...Trump haphazard in approach’, says US expert

The US decision to impose tariffs on India for buying Russian oil is a “disrespectful and ignorant policy”, American journalist and political commentator Rick Sanchez has said while noting that President Donald Trump sometimes makes decisions based on "grudges and non-scientific thinking" and that India has been "very smart to hold its ground".

In an interview with ANI, Sanchez said the US decision on secondary tariffs is "extremely preposterous in the eyes of most people" and amounts to treating India like schoolchildren who need to be told what to do.

He asserted that "India's the big boy, not a schoolchild" and when New Delhi conveyed that the US cannot tell from where to buy or not to buy oil, "it was such a cataclysmic, transformational moment".

"It's a disrespectful and ignorant policy (of the Trump Administration). Because they don't understand the underpinnings of what caused the Ukraine war from the standpoint of Russia...You have to take that into account, which PM Modi has to some regard...The disrespectful part comes when you start treating a country like India with its history, resources and capabilities like a schoolchild. Too many people think India started with Gandhi...However, what India has done for the world is every bit as important, if not more so, as what Europe and Mesopotamia have achieved... It's almost like they're treating India like they're schoolchildren who need to be told what to do. India's the big boy, not a schoolchild," he said.

"When India looked back at the US and said, 'You will not tell us who we can or cannot buy oil from', it was such a cataclysmic, transformational moment. Historians will one day look back and say that's when power started to truly decline from the old European US that was running the World since World War II...That doesn't mean the United States is in a downfall. From a power standpoint, it's going to shift to the global South, in which the premier countries are going to be India and China, along with Russia, South Africa and Brazil," he added.