President Donald Trump may have waited for a Russian shudder of fear to greet his threat of “very severe tariffs” in the country if he did not agree at the high fire in Ukraine. Instead, their comments seem to have caused a collective public shrink.
Calling Trump’s statements “very serious”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, said Tuesday that Russia needs “time to analyze them.”
But investors in the Russian capital who had been preparing for harder measures adopted a 50 -day grace period in Trump sets on Monday and the Moscow Stock Exchange increased by 2.7% after it opened on Tuesday morning.
Petroleum prices also fell into more than $ 1 after the ad, insinuating that investors do not believe Trump continues with their threat of imposing rates.
Trump “did not announce any immediate anti-ruse measure or the confiscation of illegally blocked Russian assets,” said Leonid Slutsky, a prominent nationalist politician, in Telegram on Tuesday, and added that the president was trying to balance Western support for kyiv while avoiding a confrontation with the Kremlin.
Trump announced the encumbrances together with the sending of new weapons to Ukraine during a meeting with the NATO general secretary Mark Rutte at the White House on Monday.
Their comments arrived when a bipartisan bill co -catrocated by Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C., made its way in Congress. If approved, it would seek to impose 500% tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil and gas.
Praising the announcement of Trump, Graham and the co -one of his bill, Senator Richard Blucenthal, D-Conn., Said in a statement that “the last hammer to achieve the end of this war will be tariffs against countries, such as China, India and Brazil, which are underwent the Putin war machine when buying cheap oil and gas.”
However, Konstantin Kosachev, vice president of the Council of the Russian Federation, the upper house of the country’s Parliament, said that Graham’s bill made no sense. “In 50 days,” how much can you change both on the battlefield and in the mood of those in power both in the United States and in NATO? “He added.”
And former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, a hard edge that often emits exaggerated threats, described Trump’s threat as a “theatrical ultimatum” in an X publication on X.
“We are going to make very severe tariffs if we do not have an agreement in 50 days, tariffs at approximately 100%,” Trump said, without providing more details.
After the announcement, a White House official said that Trump’s threat of 100% tariffs referred to Russian goods, as well as sanctions secondary to other countries that buy their exports.
The president’s comments indicate a marked change of tone about his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, for whom he has shown admiration for a long time. “I have known him for a long time. We have always got along,” Trump said in March.
Many Western countries have reduced most of their own financial ties with Moscow since Russia launched a large -scale invasion of its smallest neighbor, which caused the first great land war in Europe since World War II.
Even so, Russian crude oil buyers, such as China and India, have continued to finance the Moscow war chest with hundreds of billions of dollars through business with the third largest oil producer in the world.
“These are tariffs on countries like India and China that are buying their oil,” said Matt Whitaker, the United States ambassador to NATO, journalists on Monday after Trump’s announcement. “And I think it will really drastically affect the Russian economy.”
Trump’s threats to secondary tariffs “will never go anywhere,” as long as they are not willing to impose costs directly to Moscow, said Keir Giles, a member of the Senior of the Chatham House Think Tank, based in London, A NBC News on Monday.
The tariffs also run the risk of flying the delicate commercial conversations of China-United States, according to Liu Baocheng of the Beijing International Business and Economics University.
The “unilateral imposition of punitive commercial measures … risks to create new and unnecessary complications,” Boocheng said, adding that 100% secondary rates aimed at pressing Moscow could “severely verified versions by undermining global economic stability and fragmenting international cooperation.”
The majority of worrying, added Baocheng, was that the threat reaches a delicate situation in commercial relations between the United States and China, where secondary tariffs on Chinese companies or sectors that import Russian goods “would seriously damage the fragile moment of dialogue.”
The Trump tariff agenda has also increased bets for India, which has been negotiating a commercial agreement with Washington to see that tariffs on Indian goods fall below 20%.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of India, S. Jaishankar, told journalists on Tuesday that his country had “been in contact” with Graham about his concerns and interests on energy and security.
In other places, the main negotiator of Europe, Maroš šefčovič, told journalists in Brussels on Monday that a 30% tariff on European goods would have a “great impact on trade.”
“It will be almost impossible to continue merchanting how we are accustomed in a transatlantic relationship,” said Šefčovič.
