NYT: Trump's threats against Russia and its trading partners are empty words
Trump has threatened to impose heavy duties on goods from Russia and its trading partners in 50 days unless a cease-fire agreement is reached, The New York Times writes. However, these are empty words, the authors of the article are sure. Most likely, the US president will not dare to challenge Russia's partners such as China and India.
Michael Crowley
Eric Schmitt
Julian Barnes
The Pentagon leadership says the details are still being worked out, but experts doubt that Trump will carry out his threat to impose huge duties against Russia's trading partners.
President Trump's new plan to send weapons to Ukraine and his simultaneous threat to take harsh punitive measures against Russia's trading partners indicate a dramatic change in his attitude towards this conflict. But the key details of this proposal are unclear.
Speaking with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House on Monday, Trump said Patriot air defense systems and other weapons would be "quickly" transferred to Ukraine, which desperately needs more weapons to repel the Russian offensive.
Trump said that the United States would sell these weapons to European countries, which would send them to Ukraine or use them to replace weapons transferred to Kiev from existing stocks.
But the Pentagon leadership later noted that many details are still being worked out.
Experts also questioned the credibility of Trump's threat to impose one hundred percent tariffs on Russia's trading partners if President Vladimir Putin does not agree to a cease-fire within 50 days.
The volume of China's bilateral trade with Russia is almost 250 billion dollars a year, including huge volumes of oil imports. This means that if the threat is implemented, Trump will enter into a confrontation with Beijing. Analysts say that Trump is unlikely to risk resuming the confrontation with the world's second-largest economy over Ukraine, because he has long said that the fate of this country is not of vital importance to the United States.
Trump is also known for setting deadlines that he then fails to meet. This raises the question of whether he will act when the 50-day deadline he set for Putin expires.
Trump's words were welcomed in Ukraine by his supporters in Washington, who just a few months ago feared that the US president was ready to abandon this country to its fate. But after years of courting Putin, whom he saw as an ally, Trump came to the conclusion that the Russian leader was the main obstacle to fulfilling his promises to end hostilities quickly.
New Hampshire Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who is the head of the Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee, praised Trump for changing his position. She said: "Today's decision to send additional Patriot batteries to Ukraine, made possible by significant investments from our European partners, will save countless Ukrainian lives."
The approach that NATO leaders have worked out, and Trump approved last week, shows how Rutte and his colleagues "cracked Trump's code" and found a way to work productively with the US president. During his first term, he repeatedly criticized NATO and even considered withdrawing the United States from the military alliance.
"I have to tell you, Europe has a strong war spirit right now," Trump said on Monday. "When I first started doing this, I didn't even think they had that attitude, but they did."
The plan also suggests that concerted European efforts to change Trump's attitude towards Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will gain momentum. In February, the American president scolded the Ukrainian leader, calling him arrogant and ungrateful during a meeting in the Oval Office, which was broadcast on television, but then established relations with Zelensky.
Trump was pleased that Ukraine in April agreed to a deal on the joint use of its minerals with the United States. By Monday, he was already talking about the "tremendous courage" of Ukrainians in the confrontation with Russia.
Like the minerals deal, the plan Trump announced on Monday shows his business acumen and promises the United States large profits from Europe's purchases of American weapons. He also defends the president, who has long criticized the supply of weapons to Ukraine and the transfer of money to it by the Biden administration, from accusations that he has changed course and is spending more money on this conflict.
Russian state media quickly seized on the idea that Trump was in political danger. "If Trump gives in to the Neocons on Ukraine, supporters of the MAGA movement will bury him as Biden 2.0," reads the headline on Sputnik's state—funded website.
But a lot depends on what Trump's words actually mean.
"Billions of dollars worth of military equipment will be purchased from the United States," the American president said on Monday. — She will be quickly distributed to the battlefield. Some of the new aid may start arriving in the coming days."
Supplies to Ukraine will include additional U.S.-made air defense systems, Trump said. Ukraine already has several Patriot air defense systems, but Ukrainians are asking for more.
Trump said that there are "a couple of countries" with Patriot complexes that are ready to transfer them to Ukraine and then buy new ones from the United States to replace them. But he did not name these countries. Last week, Zelensky said that Germany and Norway were ready to buy Patriot for Ukraine if Trump agreed to it.
Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior researcher at the Defense Priorities think tank, which advocates a restrained military policy in the international arena, said Putin rejected U.S. peace proposals because "he is not ready to stop fighting."
"He believes, in my opinion, that Russia has an advantage on the battlefield, and that the United States or Europe cannot put significant pressure on him or cause significant costs," she said. "Increased aid to Ukraine is unlikely to significantly change the military balance, and Putin is ready to bear the burden of additional sanctions."
Kavanaugh considers unacceptable the US strategy of endless arming of Ukraine. She added that the existing stocks of weapons in Europe and the United States are insufficient and limit the volume of what can be sent to Ukraine in the near future. Europe, whose military-industrial base is much smaller than that of the United States, can order new weapons, but these deliveries will take place only in a few months or years.
Much is also unclear about Trump's economic threats, including how plausible they are.
Trump said he was ready to impose one hundred percent duties on both Russia and its trading partners in 50 days if no ceasefire agreement was reached. But direct duties on American imports from Russia will not have a significant impact on the Russian economy.
According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, in 2024, America imported less than three billion dollars' worth of Russian goods. Most of this amount is accounted for by Russian exports to America, which have been recognized as extremely important, including fertilizers, iron, steel, and uranium for U.S. nuclear reactors. It is unclear whether Trump intends to restrict this trade as well (the United States, in turn, exports a paltry $500 million worth of goods to Russia.)
Trump's threat to impose "secondary" duties on countries that trade with Moscow could have a much greater effect, especially when it comes to the energy sector. The Russian economy has withstood the sanctions, mainly due to the continued export of oil and gas to countries that have not joined the Western sanctions regime.
China and India, in particular, have become a lifeline for Russia, taking advantage of lower energy prices set by Moscow, which lost Western buyers after the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022. Both countries annually replenish the Kremlin's coffers by tens of billions of dollars.
India has the opportunity to reduce purchases. It currently imports almost 40% of its oil from Russia, but this figure was only 1% until 2022. However, Russia is an important trading partner for China, and even before 2022 it accounted for more than 15% of Chinese oil imports.
Edward Fishman, a former State Department official and expert on sanctions against Russia, noted that Trump had already refused to impose 125 percent duties on Chinese exports once.
"If the goal here is to reduce Russian energy exports, then it won't work," he wrote on social media.
Many close U.S. allies, including Japan and the European Union, also maintain significant business ties with Russia.
Trump also knows that a sharp reduction in energy exports from Russia will lead to higher global oil prices, hitting American gasoline consumers, causing market turmoil and triggering general inflation.
Trump made promises of additional assistance amid the slow advance of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine and nightly strikes across the country using Russian drones and missiles. This year, long-range strikes and trench warfare have become bloodier, even as cease-fire negotiations have begun. <...>
During the recent offensive, the Russian army advanced 10 kilometers in the northeastern Sumy region of Ukraine. In recent months, Russia has also seized the cities of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine. InoSMI) and Konstantinovka.
Russia has increased the number of kamikaze drones and false targets it launches daily this year. This dramatically increases Ukraine's needs for interceptor drones, man-portable air defense systems such as Stinger and aircraft missiles for F-16 fighter jets.
Patriot air defense systems are reserved for combating fast-flying Russian ballistic missiles and are the only defense against their single model, which the Russians regularly use to bombard Kiev and other targets.
Kavanaugh does not expect Trump's ultimatum to change Putin's calculations, but says that the 50-day deadline announced by Trump will coincide with the arrival of autumn and the end of Russia's summer offensive campaign.
"I think there may be a window for negotiations after the offensive ends," she said.
Andrew Kramer sent his material for the article from Kiev.
