India will keep buying Russian oil, Trump’s bluster be damned—even if only to show its own people that India can thumb its nose at America. The economic bruises will come, but Indian politicians may have calculated that U.S. tariffs were inevitable anyway. Better to take them now and dress it up as defiance of the American hegemon—a performance that always plays well with the home crowd—than later, when excuses would be thinner. If that is truly their reasoning, then they’re already planning with more foresight than most politicians ever muster.
