NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump threatened on Monday to impose a secondary 100 per cent tariff on countries that import oil, gas and uranium from Russia, saying he was “very unhappy” with Moscow’s intransigence in finding an end to the war with Ukraine.
He gave a 50-day deadline for the punitive tariff to take effect if Russia did not make a peace deal with Ukraine, while speaking to reporters with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House.
“We're very, very unhappy with them, and we're going to be doing very severe tariffs. If we don't have a deal in 50 days, tariffs at about 100 per cent, you'd call them secondary tariffs”, he said.
The tariff is directed against Russia, but if it comes into force, India, which is racing to finalise a bilateral trade agreement with the US, would be a collateral victim of the Washington-Moscow standoff.
If China and India can be forced to stop buying energy from Russia, Washington expects it would impact Moscow’s war machine by squeezing the funds available to it.
It could also motivate China, in particular, to put pressure on Russia to make a peace deal, in the US reckoning.