The tariff crusade launched by US President Donald Trump exempts Russia and turns the country into a potential Washington instrument to further subdue Europe, weakening Brussels’ position in the Ukraine war and forging a future economic and strategic security pincer with Moscow against the European Union.

This position favours the Kremlin, which applauds the uncertainty generated by Trump in Europe, the largest bastion of support for Ukraine. This uncertainty opens up for Kiev’s European allies a much more dangerous front than that posed by their alignment against Moscow, as evidenced by the massive falls in stock exchanges and markets worldwide.

Trump’s objective is to wear down Europe and nullify the reluctance of former European allies to the protectionist world order, but geopolitically led by Washington, which the new White House occupant is developing.

These steps strengthen Russia’s military position in Ukraine, which is forced to accept what the US says to initiate peace negotiations, and serves Washington to pressure its “allies” in NATO towards the paradigm shift of the Alliance promoted by the Trump Administration, with much more spending assumed by the rest of the partners and a deviation of the bloc’s deterrence policy towards the East, specifically towards China.

USA extends a hand to Russia amidst chaos

By deciding not to further tax trade with Russia, already affected by the punishment derived from the Ukraine war, the US thus extends a hand to an economy that in recent years has been subjected to the harassment of Western sanctions, including American ones, but which has survived that pressure by diversifying its hydrocarbon markets towards China, India and many countries of the so-called Global South, with much cheaper crude oil and gas shipments than those with which it supplied Europe.

But above all, Russia has developed a war economy that has the full admiration of the autocratic Trump and which also arouses the greed of his radical business spirit. The American leader’s unbridled imagination already sees the US joining hands with Russia in exploiting the immense natural resources of the Arctic from its also imagined new commercial bases in Greenland, or accessing the rare earths and immense Russian mineral reserves to challenge Chinese global power.

In this sense, Trump seems to overlook several issues. Firstly, Russia and China maintain a strategic alliance that despite its ups and downs and mutual distrust is much more reliable for the Kremlin than it could ever maintain with the US, whose attitude towards Moscow has been one of pressure and double standards since the USSR fell in 1991.

In addition to the distrust that is innate in Russian geopolitics towards Washington, based on all the traps that the US laid for Russia on NATO expansion in the 1990s and 2000s, the Kremlin does not forget a reality: both countries are the two nuclear superpowers of the planet and, therefore, real adversaries and potential enemies, whatever happens in the short term.

The weakening of Europe, a common objective of the US and Russia

However, at present, in that short term, Trump’s belligerent commercial enthusiasm against the whole world and especially against Washington’s traditional allies, from Brussels to Tokyo, suits Moscow’s strategy in Europe very well: it helps Russia in its bid to weaken the major EU countries and strengthens the Russian position in the Ukraine war.

There are too many fronts open for European countries, with their commitment to boost defence spending (which will ultimately fall far short of the €800 billion proposed by the European Commission), maintain multibillion-euro aid in weapons to Ukraine (which Brussels was demanding between €20 and €40 billion for this year) and increase, additionally, each country’s contribution by 5% of GDP to the NATO budget, whilst facing the economic tsunami that this tariff war will entail.

This strain will soon be reflected in European support for Ukraine itself, where the war, increasingly tilting in Russia’s favour and with no possibility of Kiev recovering the territory annexed by Moscow, will require an unparalleled effort. An effort that will double if, as is being seen, Trump moves closer each day to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whilst the latter makes his moves, currently the most skilful in this geopolitical game.

Difficulties also for Russia due to the tariff war

Despite everything, Russia does not have it all to gain from the earthquake provoked by Trump and his generalised increase in tariffs to almost the entire world.

It is possible that Moscow may increase sales of liquefied natural gas to China and other countries that received this fuel from the US and which may now become considerably more expensive. In China’s case, according to Reuters, imports of liquefied gas from the US reach 6.5 million tonnes per month, i.e., 4% to 12% of total Chinese imports of that fuel.

But the damage these US tariffs could cause to the global economy could be more onerous, and not just for hydrocarbon exports, if the world is pushed into a global recession.

This was pointed out to the German news channel Deutsche Welle by Russian economist Dmitri Nekrasov: “Russia will also suffer a lot if logistical chains break (in world trade). First of all, the blow will be taken by East and Southeast Asian countries with excessive exports, such as China and Vietnam. But then the countries that export resources to these countries will be affected”, as is the case with Russia.

The end of sanctions against Russia?

It may happen, however, that some countries are tempted to bypass the sanctions imposed on Russia by the previous US President, Joe Biden, and start trading with Moscow for much cheaper products and fuel. Those sanctions were not so much directed against the Kremlin, as against countries trading with Russian companies.

In this sense, it may happen that “the day of victory” proclaimed by Trump with his massive tariff hike leads to a reconsideration of the effectiveness or even the durability of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow, especially American ones. As soon as he inaugurated his mandate on 20 January, Trump himself was already considering the possibility of lifting those sanctions and now the time might have come.

What about the Ukraine war?

“If the whole world gets involved in a trade war, certainly no one will care what happens to Russia and Ukraine,” Nekrasov explained.

Such was also the concern evidenced this Friday by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who insisted again and again to the 32 allies of the Alliance meeting in Brussels that “Russia remains the greatest threat to NATO”, and not tariffs. Rutte reiterated to the foreign ministers of the allied countries that they should not be confused by the offensive launched by Trump with his tariff measures.

Thus, Rutte urged Alliance members to “separate” both issues and not allow Trump’s strategy to interfere with the objective of common defence and its reflection in the Ukraine war.

However, this is precisely the opportunity that Putin was waiting for to resolve the Ukraine conflict in his favour and strengthen his incipient ties with Trump. While the entire planet was focused on the tariff war, Putin took a decisive step and dispatched Kirill Dmitriev, his representative for investments and economic cooperation, to Washington on Wednesday.

This trip has been of the utmost importance because it is the first one made to Washington by a high-ranking Russian official since the beginning of the war on 24 February 2022. And the results, according to Dmitriev himself, have been very positive, with “steps forward on a large number of issues”.

For example, Dmitriev met with the US envoy for the Middle East and Russia, Steve Witkoff, hence the Ukraine war occupied a good part of the conversations. The US president already wants an exit from the conflict, but the situation is more than complicated.

On the battlefield, Russia is set to win and therefore is in no hurry to reach a definitive ceasefire. Ukraine, for its part, could lose up to a fifth of its territory, something difficult for Ukrainians themselves to forgive in elections that would be held after the armistice. And the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has little desire to leave power now, when his country, even if it lost the war, will have much to say in Europe’s security in the coming years.

European countries, the only reliable allies Ukraine has left after the US shift towards Russia, are also betting on enduring the war until, with multibillion-euro aid in weapons, Kiev’s army might be able to balance things out. The question is whether those weapons arrive in time, something that with the debacle caused by Trump is not guaranteed.

An already unsustainable war

Trump knows that he can now pressure Europe with his tariff offensive, also regarding the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict, by making this war an unsustainable burden for Europeans.

And not only that. Russia and the US have free rein to forge a security and economic entente at a global level. Dmitriev told CNN: “At the moment we are not asking for sanctions relief. We are simply assessing that, if the US wants to do more business with Russia, then they can do so”.

It seems clear that Trump’s global trade war has no intention of deepening differences with Russia, quite the contrary.

— -

Juan Antonio Sanz is a journalist and analyst for Público.es on international issues.