Staff Reports
Peter Navarro did not mince words in a recent exclusive roundtable with Breitbart’s Alex Marlow and Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle, telling Americans what many of us already suspected: India cannot keep cozying up to Beijing and Moscow while expecting to be treated as a strategic partner of the United States. Navarro framed the choice plainly — allies or opportunists — and warned that sitting on the fence with autocrats will cost New Delhi dearly if it continues to profit from Moscow’s aggression.
Navarro’s charge is blunt and unromantic: discounted Russian crude bought through Indian refiners is helping to bankroll Putin’s war machine, and that trade flows back to the battlefield in Ukraine. He’s called the practice “blood money” and accused refiners and profiteers of turning strategic loopholes into cash cows for authoritarian regimes, a reality that cannot be papered over by moralizing from the coastal elites.
Washington has begun to act on that reality. The administration’s tariff posture — including moves that doubled duties on Indian imports to send a market signal — makes clear that trade is now a lever of national security, not a charity to be handed out to whoever wants access to American consumers. If New Delhi wants preferential treatment, it will have to demonstrate that it stands with the free world and not on the same side as the dictators threatening global order.
Conservatives should cheer a policy that uses real economic pain to change behavior rather than relying on hollow lectures. Navarro’s argument about high Indian tariffs and non-tariff barriers is on point: America shouldn’t be subsidizing countries that slap our workers with barriers at home and then turn around and bankroll aggression abroad. Tough love in trade is not cruelty — it’s patriotism.
Predictably, the globalist press and New Delhi’s diplomats pushed back hard, calling Navarro’s rhetoric “inaccurate and misleading” and pointing to social-media fact checks. That pushback won’t change the underlying strategic facts: countries that choose to line up with China and Russia are putting short-term profits ahead of long-term security, and America must respond from a position of strength, not appeasement.
For hardworking Americans who pay the bills, Navarro’s message is simple and right: alliances are earned, not assumed. If India wants the benefits of partnership with the United States, it needs to stop acting like a profit center for Moscow and start acting like a true partner for freedom — and if words won’t change behavior, tariffs and policy will. That’s the kind of clear-eyed, unapologetic leadership America needs today.
