Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the United States threatening secondary tariffs against Russia’s trade partners, the European Union’s response to Trump’s tariffs, and the death of Nigeria’s former leader.
Secondary Tariffs
U.S. President Donald Trump, flanked by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte at the White House on Monday, announced that the United States would send additional weapons and military equipment to Ukraine via NATO and threatened to impose “very severe” tariffs on Russia’s trade partners if the Kremlin does not agree to a peace deal with Kyiv within 50 days.
After months of failed diplomatic efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine—during which Trump has refused to take punitive action against the Kremlin—Trump flipped the script on Monday, warning that the United States would introduce “secondary tariffs” of 100 percent on countries that buy Russian exports if no deal is reached. Aimed at countries whose trade with Moscow finances Russia’s war machine, the move could potentially target India and China, the two main buyers of Russian oil.
Meanwhile, legislation is making its way through the U.S. Congress that would enable Trump to apply even higher tariffs on Russia’s trade partners. The Sanctioning Russia Act, drafted by Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, has 80-plus co-sponsors. If passed, it would give the president the authority to levy tariffs up to 500 percent on customers of Russian crude oil. However, experts are skeptical that Trump would raise tariffs to that degree on either China or India.
The bill, which was first introduced in April and has gained steam in recent weeks, could be a “sledgehammer” available to Trump to end the war, Graham said, though Trump suggested on Monday that he may already have the power to take such action without the legislation. “I’m not sure we need it,” Trump said of the bill.
This is not the first time that the U.S. president has threatened the use of secondary tariffs against Washington’s adversaries. In March, the White House announced that it would impose a 25 percent tariff on countries that import Venezuelan oil, and in May, Trump declared that any country that buys petrochemicals from Iran would be barred from doing business with the United States.
As part of his announcement on Monday, Trump also said that Washington would send U.S.-made weapons “worth billions of dollars” to Ukraine, which would be financed by NATO allies. Though details of which weapons will be provided remain unclear, Trump has pledged to send Patriot missile defense systems to Kyiv. Trump suggested that under the new arrangement, European NATO allies could immediately send Ukraine critical U.S. weapons and equipment, including Patriot missile systems, out of their own stocks and then replenish those stocks by purchasing replacements from the United States.
During his Monday meeting with Rutte, who will help oversee the NATO effort, Trump emphasized that he was “very unhappy” and “disappointed” with Russia, which has continued to launch barrages of missiles and drones into Ukraine over the past few weeks. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia launched at least four missiles and 136 drones into Ukraine on Sunday night and into Monday morning.
Trump has expressed increasing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent weeks. Putin “talks nice, and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” Trump told reporters on Sunday.
“It’s important to increase pressure on Russia for the sake of peace and to save lives,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media, thanking NATO’s Rutte. Zelensky also met with U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv on Monday and expressed gratitude to Trump for his support to Ukraine in a separate social media post.
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The World This Week
Tuesday, July 15: Rutte continues his two-day visit to Washington.
Mike Waltz, a former U.S. national security advisor, is set to attend his Senate confirmation hearing for the role of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Thursday, July 17: G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet in Cape Town, South Africa.
What We’re Following
Delaying retaliation. Over the weekend, Trump threatened to hit the European Union and Mexico, key U.S. trading partners, with 30 percent tariffs starting Aug. 1 unless a deal is made before then. The announcement followed a series of similar threats that Trump made last week to more than a dozen countries, including Japan, South Korea, and Canada.
In response, the EU has decided to delay planned retaliatory tariffs against the United States that were due to go into effect on June 15. Those measures, targeting $24.5 billion worth of U.S. goods, were intended to counter Trump’s initial import taxes on steel and aluminum. However, Brussels said it will hold off on the tariffs in order to try to reach a trade deal with Washington by the new Aug. 1 deadline.
“We have always been very clear that we prefer a negotiated solution,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters. “This remains the case, and we will use the time that we have now.”
Even though the EU is backing down for now, Trump’s latest move has drawn strong criticism from within the 27-member bloc. Bernd Lange, the head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, called Washington’s announcement a “slap in the face for negotiations.” Meanwhile, in a social media post, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the European Commission to “assert the union’s determination to defend European interests resolutely.”
Boeing under scrutiny. India’s civil aviation authority on Monday ordered an inspection of fuel switches on all Boeing 737 and 787 aircraft operating in the country. The announcement came after India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau released a preliminary assessment report on the Air India crash that killed 260 people onboard the plane and more on the ground in Ahmedabad last month.
The report, released on Saturday, revealed that the Air India flight’s fuel-supply switches were turned off immediately after the plane took off, causing the abrupt cut off of fuel to both engines of the plane and leading to the deadly crash less than a minute later. The report did not find any mechanical or maintenance issues with the aircraft or engines, though, and it remains unclear whether the fuel-supply switch was flipped manually or by accident.
As a result of the renewed scrutiny on fuel control switches, South Korea has also announced that it will order all Boeing-operated aircraft in the country to examine their fuel switches. Similarly, Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways has also directed its pilots to “exercise caution” while operating the switches on Boeing 787 aircraft. Even still, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing have privately said that the fuel switch locks on Boeing aircrafts are safe, according to a document seen by Reuters.
A divisive legacy. Former Nigerian leader Muhammadu Buhari died on Sunday at age 82 at a hospital in London, his spokesperson announced. In a social media post, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu declared a period of national mourning and praised Buhari’s “deep commitment to the unity and progress” of Nigeria.
Buhari, who ruled the country as a military leader from late 1983 to 1985 and later as a democratically elected president from 2015 to 2023, leaves behind a divisive legacy. Though he campaigned on rooting out government corruption, Buhari struggled to tackle rising poverty and insecurity in Nigeria.
“No single person can be justly expected to fix all of a country’s problems or even most of them,” Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in Foreign Policy. “But that Buhari failed on almost every front—despite the time and goodwill at his disposal—makes his failure even more perplexing.”
Odds and Ends
Wimbledon has a new star. Italian tennis player Jannik Sinner defeated his rival and two-time defending champion Carlos Alcaraz on Sunday, securing Sinner’s first Wimbledon title and making him the famed tennis tournament’s new men’s singles winner. After the match, Sinner thanked Alcaraz for “another great fight” in a post on Instagram and offered his respect. “These are the battles we live for,” he said in the post. “Until next time.” — Christina Lu
The post Trump Threatens Secondary Tariffs Against Russia’s Trade Partners appeared first on Foreign Policy.
