Donald Trump, the president of the United States, teased a radical change in his position on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine on July 14. Trump announced that he would send significant air defense units to Ukraine, whose cities are currently receiving an onslaught of more than 100 Russian drones and missiles every day. Trump even allegedly spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about what kind of offensive equipment Kyiv needed to directly attack Moscow, according to leaks from the White House.
Trump threatened a 100 percent “secondary tariff” on Russian oil if the Kremlin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire by September 3 with the most explicit sanction threat to date. Trump’s sly rhetoric, however, is far from moving the dial. His claims that he struck Moscow have been refuted by Russian officials. Putin’s aerial assault may be lessened, but delivery of them in the same way that Trump allegedly stated will take many months.
Markets have not been affected by Trump’s threat to impose sanctions, despite the fact that it would be a move to try to block the third-largest oil producer in the world.
However, it should not surprise Trump that he has changed his mind about Russia. Trump’s opinion of important US strategic interests is fundamentally different from Putin’s, despite the apparent personal affinities with Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding Ukraine and Russia.
Putin wants to export Russian gas, but Trump wants to export more of it because he no longer has access to the pipeline in Europe. Trump cares about Greenland because he recognizes the value of future Arctic shipping routes, and its rival Arctic shipping route, which is crucial to keeping the support of China. Trump wants to seize the same amount of mineral resources as Putin and Putin can for Russia.
After agreeing to a long-term strategic alignment with Washington regarding those minerals, Trump’s longstanding hostility toward Zelenskyy, a legacy of his first impeachment scandal, which resulted from an attempt to extort money from Zelenskyy, was eased after he admitted to failing in his inaugural pledge to resolve the conflict within a day, which he now admits was an exaggeration.
Trump has acknowledged that Putin hasn’t been engaging in honest negotiations, albeit with a delay. No progress was made in Kyiv and Moscow’s peace talks in May or June, with both parties appearing to appease Trump and try to persuade him to support their positions.
Putin’s increased demands may have contributed to Trump’s realization that during those negotiations, he may have increased his demands. He added that Russia would need a “buffer zone” in northern Ukraine in addition to insisting on the occupation of all of the southern and eastern Ukrainian regions, which he claims to have annexed, even though they were never completely occupied.
For two reasons, Trump’s change has so far had a muted impact. First, because his initial warning about the Russian oil tariff is untrue. Trump has been very cautious about rising oil prices, or even their potential rise. He publicly decried the subsequent spike in oil prices following his June strikes on Iran.
However, it’s also doubtful that the secondary tariff threat will work by itself. Venezuelan exports declined after Trump threatened to target Venezuelan oil exports at the end of March, but since then, as Beijing has increased its purchases. There is little chance Beijing, Russia’s largest oil buyer, will care about a similar threat to Russian production, especially since it is currently in the middle of its own tariff dispute with Trump, which has already caused him to threaten tariffs even above 100%.
Despite having 83 of the chamber’s 100 members support it, Trump’s decision to play for his time with his threat is likely to stymie the passage of a Senate bill that would put additional sanctions on Russia. Trump’s leadership in the Senate and the House is cautious about being pressured into speaking out on the matter, as Trump does. He wants almost universal authority and deference in his party’s policymaking.
Despite his claims that the US’s funding and equipment are higher than the US’s before Trump’s second term, it will continue to be US funding and technology that determine Kyiv’s ability to withstand or turn the tide. Trump has gotten Europe to agree to pay more for supporting Kyiv, despite his claims that it was earlier. And it will take time to get Ukraine’s forces to use new weapons.
Trump will need to alter his strategy as well. The US cannot defeat Russia by increasing economic pressure alone, which could force Putin to take seriousness in negotiations. Washington’s conflict with its allies and partners only makes things worse.
Trump may not have much of a chance of persuading Russia to halt Russian oil production, but such restrictions could sway India into a different course of action. Prior to the full-scale invasion, New Delhi was a largely uninteresting buyer of Russian oil, and now has its second-largest market, where 40% of India’s imports are now coming from Russia.
Hardeep Singh Puri, the country’s minister of petroleum, stated last week that it would not alter its strategy. He emphasized that New Delhi has adhered to previous restrictions, including the oil price cap, which the Biden administration and G7 allies created in 2022 to allow Russian oil to flow freely but only to limit its profits there. Similar to Trump, who is currently adamant about market disruption, with Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen even saying that the structure was intended to secure oil “bargains” for India and other developing nations.
However, the minister did point out that New Delhi could change its strategy if there was a global agreement to change how it deals with Russian oil.
Trump will need to embrace a multilateral approach if he wants to make credible threats against Moscow.
Some procedures are simple to follow. Brussels and Westminster have taken the lead in pursuing Russia’s “shadow fleet,” which aims to evade sanctions and the price cap, and develops new sanctions proposals, including those that include changes to the oil price cap to further lower it when prices are low, in part because Trump’s administration has so far resisted additional sanctions. Trump should quickly ratify both European Union sanctions, which were reached on July 18 and the second on July 18.
A secondary tariff or other sanctions on Russian oil customers would also have a much higher chance of working if Europe could be persuaded to do so.
Trump can also blacklist Novatek, Russia’s main LNG exporter, to stop Russia from increasing its additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. Europe has yet to make that move, preferring to focus solely on a gradual end to its purchases by the end of the year. However, earlier US sanctions on Russian LNG projects have proved much more difficult to evade because the LNG tanker market is much smaller than the oil market.
Putin’s war and all the sanctions he has imposed on Russia’s economy have finally caused the country’s economy to struggle. Russian banks reportedly having preliminary discussions about the terms of state bailouts.
However, in the midst of all this pain, Russia asserts that it has finally seized a town in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine, a claim Kyiv refutes and is still unsubstantiated. Trump’s resistance to Ukrainian attacks on the Kremlin’s energy assets could significantly affect the outcome of the conflict.
Trump may have reaffirmed his position on Russia, but whether it goes beyond rhetoric will depend on his willingness to cooperate with allies and partners and bear the costs associated with doing so.
