If Trump remains angry, no country buying Russian oil will sell anything to the US.
The Wall Street Journal reports Trump Expresses Anger at Putin as Ukraine Talks Make Little Progress
On Friday, Putin called for “interim governance” in Ukraine under the auspices of the United Nations, which would essentially push out Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Sunday, Trump told NBC News those comments were unacceptable because they meant there wouldn’t be a deal for a long time. “You could say that I was very angry, pissed off,” he said, when “Putin started getting into Zelensky’s credibility.” He added that if Russia couldn’t reach a deal, he would impose secondary tariffs.
“If a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault,” Trump said, “anybody buying oil from Russia will not be able to sell their product, any product, not just oil, into the United States.”
The president’s new threats toward Russia marks a shift away from his previous praise for Putin, just weeks after Trump’s tensions with Zelensky erupted in a fiery confrontation in the Oval Office. The Ukrainian leader had urged the U.S. not to trust Putin and Trump responded that Kyiv needed to accept that it had a weak negotiating hand, three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Trump said U.S. officials had conveyed his frustration to Russia and that he expected to talk with Putin later this week.
His criticism comes after rounds of talks with Moscow that the White House has broadly called successful, but have yielded little progress. Moscow and Kyiv said they agreed to a cessation of airstrikes against energy infrastructure in both countries, but such strikes have continued, albeit at a slower pace.
The Trump administration also tried to formalize a cease-fire in the Black Sea, but Moscow tried to attach a number of demands to the deal, including sanctions relief. The statements issued afterward by Washington and Moscow differed sharply, prompting some former U.S. diplomats to wonder whether they had attended different meetings.
Glen Howard, president of the Saratoga Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said that advisers around Trump who are hawkish toward Russia appear to be gathering influence because of Russian foot-dragging in negotiations.
Trump’s personal annoyance with the Kremlin appears to be growing, Howard said, pointing to a Truth Social post by Trump Saturday that referred to “Russian aggression” along with Chinese expansionism, as a justification for U.S. strategic interest in Greenland. The phrase was an unusual dig at the Kremlin, Howard said.
India and China in the Spotlight
Russia sells oil primarily to China and India so they are in the spotlight.
Trump did not say how his threat would work, but there is only one way it could work.
And that is tariffs so high any countries buying oil from Russia could not export anything to the US.
That might poise more than a bit of a problem for call centers in India, among other things.
Practical or not, let’s see if this gets Putin’s attention. One of the things I thought Trump would get right is ending the war in Ukraine.
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