Trump Applies His Art of Tariffs to Ukraine
If you buy the notion that our transactional president applies The Art of the Deal to everything he negotiates, both domestic and foreign, Donald J. Trump’s flip-flop this week on whether he would send the last of US weapons promised under the Biden administration to Ukraine in its defense against Vladimir Putin’s Russia looks a lot like the tariff negotiations. The “pause” was described last week as a “review” of weapon levels in the US stockpile to defend ourselves against attack from a country like, maybe, Iran – whose nuclear build-up we had just “obliterated” -- or North Korea. Maybe Greenland?
“We’re going to send more weapons,” President Trump said this week, according to The New York Times after indicating he is unhappy with Putin for dragging out ceasefire talks with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, since February.
Trump has had similar issues with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the lack of ceasefire in Gaza. But if Trump has grown frustrated not finding the art in ending wars, as he promised last November, Netanyahu has at least taken a big first step toward getting the president the recognition that President Obama received rather prematurely 16 years ago, by nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Perhaps Putin will second Netanyahu’s nomination?
The temporary halt on arms to Ukraine came as The Atlantic ran a piece by Anne Applebaum in which she writes that the US has finally changed alliances from Ukraine to Russia. The column came off as having had hope just prior that the shift would not happen. If you’re not familiar with her work you might have found Applebaum to seem naïve.
Applebaum is not the least bit naïve and in fact has been a modern-day Hanna Arendt in warning of the dangers of creeping, impending authoritarianism in the US and elsewhere in the world.
As he has with Netanyahu, Trump has held regular phone calls with Putin before and especially since Zelenskyy’s infamously awkward White House appearance last February. But with Russia-Ukraine as with Israel-Gaza and now Israel-Iran, Trump has not been able to end conflicts and wars on Day One, as he promised.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s protracted tariff negotiations, showing as much success so far as his ceasefire negotiations are providing the administration with a model of how to handle foreign affairs. The on-and-off again tariffs are manipulating the stock market mostly in Trump’s favor – maybe something good can come from these ceasefire ups and downs?
Netanyahu’s Nobel Prize nomination, no matter how lacking in seriousness, gives the Trump administration ability to apply his tariff negotiation tactics to Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine. The prospect in Trump’s mind that he might match the first-year accomplishment of his political nemesis, Obama – or that at least he has right-thinking leaders on his side in this matter gives him some breathing room in negotiating deals that turn out to be far more difficult than a couple of Day-One phone calls.
Lassa is founding editor of The Hustings.