Can Tariffs Pressure Russia to Negotiate?

AlArabiya English

Will Trump’s proposed 100% tariffs really push Putin to the negotiating table or are they just symbolic? John Kavulich, Senior Editor for Outcome Modeling Analysis, shares his thoughts.

Transcript

00:00John, saying that it's, and you said 100%, 500%, whatever the tariff manages to be,

00:05is any of that really going to make a difference to Russia?

00:08Is that really going to make a difference and bring Putin to the table for negotiations?

00:12Or is it just kind of symbolic?

00:16It potentially is real.

00:19India is a huge purchaser of oil because it's able to buy it at a discount,

00:24and it's got a billion plus people.

00:26So for India, it's useful, and they do refine some and send it on.

00:31China is another big purchaser of Russian oil.

00:37Is either India or China, do they have the elasticity, the economic, political, commercial,

00:44financial elasticity to absorb those tariffs?

00:47Potentially, you could see Russia discounting the oil to the point where the tariff doesn't matter.

00:54But 100% secondary tariffs get attention, and primarily they get attention because that means

01:02that banks start looking to their compliance officers, the compliance officers start reading

01:08the U.S. regulations, and then people start to get nervous because then you start to worry about fines.

01:15So, yes, they potentially can be a deterrent.

01:20But as we've seen with President Trump, he generally doesn't like to drop the hammer, so to speak.

01:28He likes to threat, threat, threat, and keep threatening and keep delaying, hoping he can get a deal.

01:34So, if we look at his history, it's likely they're not going to actually implement anything.

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