Just as certain classes of medication are sometimes in vogue and prescribed to help with all kinds of ailments, it seems that U.S. President Donald Trump and his team have stumbled upon a magical remedy for all the world’s problems: tariffs. Everybody and their retirement accounts are now acutely aware of tariffs’ (possible) power to fix (nonexistent) balance of trade problems—and very real power to send financial markets into a tailspin. With all the attention on Trump’s April 2 unveiling of “reciprocal” tariffs and its aftermath, the announcement of a novel economic statecraft tool, secondary tariffs, is going almost unnoticed. President Trump is trying to make Russia and Ukraine agree to a ceasefire on terms that neither would likely find favorable. To achieve that Trump is having to use both threats and enticements.
Trump’s Secondary Sanctions on Russian Oil Are a Lose-Lose Proposition (Sergey Vakulenko, Carnegie Russia Eurasia)
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