- Trump threatens sanctions against Russia…
- Trump’s on the slippery slope…
- Kiyosaki: TRUMP’S CURSE: $35 Trillion Meltdown Ahead?
Dear Reader,
On Monday President Trump pledged punishing economic penalties against Russia… should Mr. Putin fail to fold the wing within 50 days.
Said the president:
- We’re very, very unhappy with them, and we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a [peace] deal in about 50 days.
Why 50 days and not 48 days — or 60 days?
I do not know. Yet the president’s “about 50 days” phrasing suggests a certain fluidity. He can reposition his calendar as he pleases.
Mr. Putin, predictably, has refused the American’s terms. The Russian will not fold the wing within 50 days… or ever.
CBS News, yesterday:
- Russia has rejected President Trump’s “ultimatum” for Moscow to sign a ceasefire deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days on Tuesday as “unacceptable,” calling for continued negotiations and insisting that the invasion ordered by President Vladimir Putin would continue until its goals are achieved.
My agents inform me that CBS News — in this instance at least — is accurate.
Here’s Where It Gets Complicated
Yet the American president’s threats pack a wider wallop.
Russia heavily finances its armed Ukrainian campaign through foreign energy sales.
Now the president threatens “secondary” tariffs against nations that take in Russian energy products.
Reports Politico:
- Trump on Monday threatened to impose “secondary tariffs” of up to 100 percent on countries that still trade with Russia. The Senate legislation would authorize even steeper duties on list of nations that includes China, India and Brazil.
- “We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a [Russia-Ukraine peace] deal within 50 days,” Trump said during a meeting on Monday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “Secondary tariffs are very, very powerful.”
Just so. Yet is not the president negotiating trade pacts with these and other nations?
And would not 100% secondary tariffs against them complicate negotiations?
I hazard they would. Is the president willing to place these trade negotiations in jeopardy — over Ukraine?
Here is an additional question: Will the president impose the tariff upon his European allies?
After all: Europe still imports some 20% of its natural gas from the Russian Federation.
Why Sanctions Don’t Work
Regardless, the 50-day open window provides Mr. Putin and his economic advisors 50 days to outfox the sanctions scheme.
They have run their circles around previous sanction schemes. I am confident they will run fresh circles around newer sanction schemes.
That is because sanctions rarely succeed.
As I have noted before, Mr. Market is a highly resourceful fellow.
Slam the front door shut and he will smuggle his goods through the rear door.
Bar the rear door and he will slip through a window.
Seal the windows and he will tunnel his way into the basement.
Given the incentive… he will always get through.
New Arms Sales
On Monday, meantime, the president announced renewed arms sales to Ukraine.
Yet the president was adamant to separate himself from the previous administration — and to caress his voters that had opposed weapons donations to Ukraine.
How?
He insisted these arms sales are not donations. They are instead business transactions. They will be purchases of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The alliance will then shovel the arms into Ukraine.
Thus “America First” stands intact. After all, foreigners must pay for American weapons.
The United States is not giving them away.
Yet the United States is the primary funder of the North Atlantic alliance. Will not the United States, then, at least partially fund the arms sales?
At all events, I hazard Mr. Putin will not appreciate the distinction.
To him the transaction constitutes additional American weapons shipments to Ukraine — weapons shipments that injure the nation he leads.
Applause From the Wrong People
Meantime, the president is accepting applause from unlikely sources. They are praising his sudden prickliness towards Russia.
The president is a man attentive to applause. And I fear the more unlikely the source of that applause… the more melodious it rings in his ears.
It is as if he has subdued and conquered them. Examples:
Fierce Trump foe Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) congratulates the president’s “remarkable shift.”
And Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) claims the president is “finally coming to his senses.”
Yet is he? Coming to his senses, that is?
Or is he taking leave of the very same senses?
My Fears Come True
This I wrote several months ago:
- President Trump is a very boastful and prideful fellow. He is jealous, fantastically, of his appearance.
- He has promised peace in Ukraine. He believes he must therefore deliver peace in Ukraine — else he lose “face.”
- Thus he is out to “win.” Yet here was — and here remains — my central concern:
- The American president might “double down” to get a handshake from the implacable Putin.
- He might therefore bless Ukrainian missile assaults deep within the Russian landmass… to compel the Russian to the negotiation table.
- Yet by all available evidence, Mr. Putin would likely remain entrenched.
- He too is a very determined fellow.
- Up the escalation ladder the two men may go… doggedly and determinedly — rung by perilous rung.
Trump’s on the Slippery Slope
My fear of several months remains my ongoing fear.
Here, former Trump advisor Steven Bannon shares that fear:
- If we aren’t careful, it will turn into Trump’s Vietnam. That’s what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up owning the war and it went down as his war not Lyndon Johnson’s.
Over 58,000 Americans perished in Vietnam.
Yet no Americans — officially at least — have perished in Ukraine.
Let us, then, not draw false parallels between Vietnam and Ukraine.
Yet let us not diminish them. The parallels exist.
In conclusion:
One Vietnam was one Vietnam too many, politically. The nation does not need another.
Nor, for the matter of that, does President Trump.
Brian Maher
for Freedom Financial News
