Washington, August 31: The US decision to impose tariffs on India for purchasing Russian oil is “disrespectful and ignorant,” American journalist and political commentator Rick Sanchez has said, arguing that New Delhi has been right to stand firm against Washington’s pressure.
In an interview with ANI, Sanchez described the policy of secondary tariffs under the Trump administration as “extremely preposterous in the eyes of most people,” accusing Washington of treating India like “schoolchildren who need to be told what to do.”
“India’s the big boy, not a schoolchild,” Sanchez 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.”
Sanchez, who has worked across American television networks, noted that President Donald Trump often takes decisions “based on grudges and non-scientific thinking.” He argued that the tariffs fail to acknowledge the complex origins of the Ukraine conflict and dismiss India’s independent approach.
“It’s a disrespectful and ignorant policy because they don’t understand the underpinnings of what caused the Ukraine war from the standpoint of Russia,” he said. “The disrespectful part comes when you start treating a country like India—with its history, resources and capabilities—like a schoolchild.”
He added that India’s contributions to the world are frequently underestimated. “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,” Sanchez remarked.
Calling New Delhi’s refusal to bow to pressure a turning point, Sanchez predicted historians would remember it as a moment of global realignment. “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,” he said.
The commentator stressed that the shift does not mean America is collapsing but that global power is redistributing. “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,” Sanchez said.
