Donald Trump said that US will likely impose a 100% tariff on Russia and threatened sanctions on buyers of Russian exports, including oil, if it does not end hostilities with Ukraine. But Trump’s threat of sanctions came with a 50-day grace period, a move that was welcomed by investors in Russia where the rouble recovered from earlier losses and stock markets rose.
“We’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100%,” Trump said Monday during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House.
Trump said the levies would come in the form of “secondary tariffs,” without providing details.
On responding to the question if Trump was referring to a secondary sanctions, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that sanctions and tariffs were “both tools in his toolbox” and that “you can do either one.”
A White House official said Russia could face both measures if it fails to sign a ceasefire deal by early September.
Trump’s threat to impose so-called secondary sanctions on Russia, if carried out, would be a major shift in Western sanctions policy.
Throughout the more than three-year-old war, Western countries have cut most of their own financial ties to Moscow, but have held back from taking steps that would restrict Russia from selling its oil elsewhere. That has allowed Moscow to continue earning hundreds of billions of dollars from shipping oil to buyers such as China and India.
Ukraine thanks US for support
This comes a day after Trump said the US was sending a “top-of-the-line weapons” package to Ukraine that includes Patriot air defense batteries. The president said that NATO member states will pay for the weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
“We’re not buying it, but we will manufacture it,” Trump said. “They’re going to be paying for it.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Telegram he had spoken to Trump and “thanked him for his readiness to support Ukraine and to continue working together to stop the killings and establish a lasting and just peace.”
Zelensky held talks with Trump’s envoy Keith Kellogg on Monday.
(With inputs from Bloomberg and Reuters)