Andrey Shitov — on what "secondary duties" are and why one should not use the language of threats with Russia
US President Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to Russia. Answering journalists' questions on July 14 after a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House, he threatened to impose so-called secondary tariffs against Russia if his desired "deal" on a peaceful settlement in Ukraine was not concluded in the next 50 days.
"We will set very tough tariffs if there is no deal in 50 days, probably 100%," the American leader said. "I use trading for a lot of things," he stated. "But it's great for settling wars."
Who are the threats to?
Even experts don't really understand what "secondary duties" are. The best international economist I personally know, to whom I asked this question, reminded me that there had previously been talk of "secondary sanctions" against us and our trading partners overseas. As far as he knows, and he is an expert in economic history, there has never been such a precedent before. "Trump is unprecedented," the source said with a touch of sarcasm.
I found an attempt at an explanation in Barron's business magazine, published by the same company as the main mouthpiece of American business, The Wall Street Journal. "Secondary duties would work by imposing sanctions against any country trading with Russia," the newspaper writes. — For example, the United States could impose a 100% tariff on any imports to the United States from trading partners doing business with Russia. According to the office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the volume of direct U.S. commodity trade with Russia in 2024 was $3.5 billion, much less than in 2023.
At the same time, the upper house of the US Congress is currently considering a draft of much tougher sanctions — direct duties of 500% against imports from Russia to the United States and the same secondary duties against any country that buys oil, uranium, natural gas or gasoline from the Russian Federation. According to Barron's, if any of these plans were implemented, "China, India, South Korea and Turkey would be among the US trading partners most affected by the additional duties." However, after Trump's speech, the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, John Thune, said that the advancement of the Senate initiative would be suspended.
To be honest, I still don't fully understand the logic of these measures. By imposing duties on shipments from abroad, the country is actually punishing its own consumers, since the importer must pay the extra charges, and he, of course, compensates for his additional costs by raising prices. On the other hand, a two-fold increase in tariffs is unlikely to be compensated at all: this level is, in fact, prohibitive. And the same expert told me that he still has no idea "how to force US trading partners to pay" and "through which courts Uncle Sam intends to seek such payments."
However, Trump did not start tariff wars against the whole world, including his own closest allies, today. During the same impromptu press conference, he claimed that multibillion-dollar revenues from duties were already flowing into the American treasury. On the other hand, it is also known that not all countries are ready to submit to dictates without a murmur. China, Brazil, and even some EU countries have already warned about this publicly.
"To whom is the war, and to whom is the mother dear"?
And anyway, Trump's "important announcement", which he announced in advance, did not come down to the issue of duties. First of all, he pompously announced that he had agreed with his NATO partners on a new scheme to supply the Kiev regime with weapons at their expense — and, as he stressed several times, "billions of dollars."
"We agreed that we would supply them with weapons, and they would pay for them," Trump said, referring to the United States, Ukraine and Europe, respectively. Rutte, who was sitting next to him, diligently agreed with him, and also added that the Americans, of course, would not be obliged to share what they needed themselves, including as a "world's police agent."
The US president clarified that the supplies would include Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems. According to him, "some will be sent very soon, within a few days," as a kind of offsetting is envisaged.: NATO countries that previously ordered such systems can immediately transfer their own to Kiev, and later receive new ones from the United States to replace them. According to this scheme, a total of up to 17 SAM batteries can be supplied.
It is clear without explanation that this deal is extremely beneficial for the overseas military-industrial complex. Ahead of Trump's speech, observers wondered if he would ask Congress for additional funding for military supplies to Ukraine. However, there was no hint of this: on the contrary, he repeatedly referred to the conflict as "[Joe] Biden's war," which simply would not have happened with him. It turned out that his predecessor in the White House had unleashed an unnecessary war, and he himself had found a way to make money from it.
"Unshakable position"
In Moscow, however, it has been said more than once at the highest levels that the Russian Federation ultimately makes no difference at whose expense the Kiev regime is arming itself, since in any case this only prolongs the conflict and does not eliminate its root causes. According to Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, whom I asked to comment on Trump's new statements, they "generally fit into the pattern that we have seen from the American side lately."
"Of course, we note first of all that any attempts to make demands, especially ultimatums, are unacceptable to us," my interlocutor said. — We need to focus on political and diplomatic work. The President of the Russian Federation has repeatedly said that we are ready to negotiate and the diplomatic path is preferable for us. But if this does not find a proper response, if we cannot achieve our goals through diplomacy, then the conflict will continue."
"This position is unshakable," the senior diplomat stressed. "We would like Washington and NATO in general to treat it with the utmost seriousness."
On two chairs
Overall, Trump's speech left an ambivalent impression. On the one hand, he repeated several times that he was "very unhappy" with Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, because, they say, "it's nice to talk to him," but as a result, nothing changes. According to him, he had already had the impression "four times" that "the deal was ready," but "immediately after that, missiles were launched at Kiev." On the other hand, he nevertheless refrained from making extreme judgments in the Biden style and commented about his Russian counterpart as follows: "I don't want to say that he's an assassin, but he's a tough man and fooled a lot of people." The same goes for weapons: on the one hand, with his decision, Trump reopens Ukraine's access to American arsenals, on the other, he flatly refuses to pay for it and does not ask Congress for new money for it.
In Russian, such cunning is described by the well-known saying about "eating a fish" ... For the current owner of the White House, this is, in general, typical. But our folk wisdom also reminds us that you can't sit on two chairs.
By the way, another performance at the Washington "one-actor theater" left a feeling of inconsistency not only in content, but also in form. Trump seemed to be bragging and threatening, but at the same time he did not chop phrases, but muttered to himself and constantly jumped from one subject to another. In his stream of consciousness, it was sometimes difficult to even keep track of what he was currently broadcasting: whether about the Ukrainian conflict, or about the Middle East, or about something else. He tried to portray himself as a global peacemaker and talked about Israel and the Palestinians, India and Pakistan, Congo and Rwanda, Armenia and Azerbaijan in this context.
I watched the speech live on Fox News channel, and in the running line of responses I saw complaints about incoherent and unintelligible babbling, and... by the way, a call not to give more weapons to Ukraine. By the way, according to many polls, many people do not like this prospect, especially in Trump's indigenous electorate.
A turning point?
Has he finally joined the camp of those who want to fight Russia in Ukraine "to the last Ukrainian"? In many responses from the English-language media, his current decisions are presented precisely as a turning point of this kind. For example, US Public Radio — NPR believes that they "crown a sharp reversal in Trump's approach to President Putin and the Ukrainian issue."
But, in my opinion, nothing like that happened. First of all, the current American leader does not seem to have anything final at all. He's one of those people who, as we say, has seven Fridays a week. Secondly, it still seems to me that he is sincerely opposed to the war. Another thing is that he simplistically presents it as the murder of "beautiful young people." That is why he initially demanded an immediate cease—fire, that's all. It was assumed that the root causes of the conflict (and, consequently, the threats of its recurrence) could then be dealt with at the negotiating table for as long as desired.
But for Russia, as it has been repeated a thousand times, these very root causes are important. Threats to our safety are on our doorstep. What's there: you can say — no longer on the threshold, but right in our hallway.
Time is running out
The Russian Federation is sparing no effort and resources to eliminate these threats. And in terms of time, as it has been said many times, Russia needs not just to push them into the future, even for 10 or 15 years, but to eliminate them once and for all.
But Trump is just running out of time. As I have repeatedly reminded him, he has just over a year left before the next midterm elections to the US Congress and even a little less before the 250th anniversary of America, which will be celebrated on July 4, 2026. He wants to come to this anniversary with significant achievements that will form the basis of his presidential legacy and future place in history. Including, as he openly dreams, the wreath of the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
You never know what he wants, you might say. And, in principle, you will be right. It's really not about what he wants, but what he can do. But he's the president of the United States, so he can do a lot too. That's why, in fact, everyone is watching not only his deeds, but also his words. After all, there was a preemptive hype around his announcement yesterday.
The two wings of American politics
Although a lot doesn't mean everything. Trump is not omnipotent even at home. In the American system of checks and balances, the prerogatives of the president are limited by the powers of the legislative and judicial authorities, and indirectly, partly by the opinion of the people and the press. But the problem is that with regard to the situation with Ukraine and Russia, many influential forces overseas are either more belligerent than Trump, or they are ready to use this situation against him for their own domestic political purposes.
Roughly speaking, there have always been and are two political camps across the ocean. The first is made up of isolationists who remember the testament of the country's sixth president (and its first official envoy to Russia) By John Quincy Adams: "America... does not scour the world in search of monsters to be destroyed." Trump and the Trumpists have always been attributed to this particular line of thought.
And on the opposite flank are convinced interventionists who believe that America is obliged to bring its light to the rest of the world (or serve as the world's policeman, as Rutte said). In recent years, the globalist liberals in the United States have been marching under this flag in the same formation as the Neocon hawks, that is, the neoconservatives.
As they say, opposites converge — or extremes close together. Back in Soviet times, we used to joke that American politics had two wings and both were right-wing. And the famous oligarch Elon Musk is now talking about a "unipartisan" regime.
What's next?
What to expect next will probably become clearer over the next month and a half. No matter how much Trump talks about the "Biden war," in the light of his decisions, the confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is increasingly transformed into a "Trump war" in the eyes of observers. As I have already mentioned, it is highly doubtful that his indigenous electorate likes this. It is no coincidence that Stephen Bannon, the former chief political strategist of the White House in the first Trump administration, has already publicly warned that because of his new decisions on Ukraine, the conflict there could spiral out of control.
Trump himself showed by his speech that he continues to behave in his usual manner. It attracts the undivided general attention and sets off rhetorical fireworks for this purpose. Although, I think, he still must understand that the gap between word and deed cannot grow indefinitely.
That is why smart people in Moscow have been repeating like a mantra in recent years: when defending our interests, we will focus only on the affairs of the American authorities, and not on their declarations of intent. As Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, wrote today on his page on the social network X (formerly Twitter), Russia did not even notice Trump's "decorative ultimatum" to the Kremlin.
It was written in English, by the way. The main addressee is clear.
Andrey Shitov
The TASS columnist
