Sensex, Nifty Retreat On US Tariff Worries

(RTTNews) - Indian shares fell sharply on Thursday as traders waited to see how New Delhi responds to pressure from Washington to stop buying Russian oil after the 50 percent tariffs levied by the U.S. on Indian goods came into effect on Wednesday.

Signals from White House officials on the future of the relationship between the two countries were mixed.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the bilateral ties remain "complicated" but expressed confidence that the two countries would come together "at the end of the day".

In an interview with Bloomberg, U.S. President Donald Trump's trade counsellor Peter Navarro has accused India of playing a double game on trade and energy, alleging that its actions amounted to "Modi's war".

The Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), a New Delhi-based think tank, said that textiles, gems, jewelry, shrimp and carpets would be worst affected by the tariffs, with the sectors bracing for a 70 percent collapse in exports, endangering hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The benchmark BSE Sensex fell 705.97 points, or 0.87 percent, to 80,080.57 as trading resumed after a holiday on Wednesday for celebrating Ganesh Chaturthi.

The broader NSE Nifty index ended down 211.15 points, or 0.85 percent, to 24,500.90 while the BSE mid-cap and small-cap indexes lost 1.1 percent and 1 percent, respectively.

The market breadth was weak on the BSE, with 2,635 shares declining while 1,467 shares advanced and 156 shares closed unchanged.

Among the prominent decliners, HCL Technologies tumbled nearly 3 percent while Tata Motors, Trent, Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Steel, Bharti Airtel, ICICI Bank, Hindustan Unilever, HDFC Bank, TCS, Power Grid Corp and Infosys declined 1-2 percent.