Trump’s Tariff Diplomacy: Coerce Russia’s Allies to End Ukraine War

President Donald Trump is deploying a muscular form of tariff diplomacy, asking the European Union to join a campaign to coerce Russia’s allies into abandoning Moscow. The plan involves imposing joint tariffs of up to 100% on all goods from India and China, a move designed to make their support for Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine economically unsustainable. This was the central proposal in a recent US-EU meeting on sanctions.
This aggressive use of trade policy as a foreign policy tool stems from frustration with the deadlocked peace process. With Russia stepping up its attacks, the Trump administration is seeking a game-changing move. A White House official confirmed the US is ready to act but has made European participation an absolute precondition for moving forward.
The focus on India and China is a direct challenge to the alternative power bloc Putin has been cultivating. The US has already demonstrated its resolve with a 50% tariff hike on India. Now, it seeks the EU’s partnership to create an economic coalition that could severely impact two of the world’s largest economies.
This bold international maneuver is shadowed by significant domestic legal risk. The president’s authority to impose such tariffs is the subject of a pending Supreme Court case, with a ruling expected soon. The financial stakes are enormous, as a loss would compel the US to issue what Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called “terrible” refunds amounting to tens of billions of dollars.