Will Trump Trigger WW3? (2)

Arggghhh. As I was writing, Trump came out with his announcement. It looks like Trump backed down from most of the wilder stuff, or delayed much of it—to be backed off from later? One suspects that this announcement was done to distract from the Epstein matter. Here’s a fairly detailed tweet from Big Serge that’s based off a WSJ account:

Big Serge @witte_sergei

1h

Trying to parse through Trump's "major announcement" about Russia and Ukraine, and it's a little hard to figure out exactly what's going on.

He starts by saying that they're sending more Patriot batteries to Ukraine, but clarifies that they are being "paid for" by the Europeans, which makes it a little unclear if these are existing stock or if Europe is buying new production for Ukraine, which would obviously greatly affect the delivery timetable.

The big question to be answered here is, will payment for the Patriots be drawn from seized Russian assets?

Now they are hosting Mark Rutte in the Oval Office, and their remarks make it sound like what's actually happening is the Europeans are going to send Ukraine the Patriot systems in their own inventories and then replace them with new orders from the US. Germany has been talking about sending Ukraine four Patriot batteries. Ukraine has received a total of eight so far.

Next, Trump is giving Russia 50 days to make a peace deal (lol) or he'll impose a 100% additional tariff. Russian markets jumped on this announcement, so safe to say this doesn't register as much of a threat.

[NB: The language confused a lot of people. It’s not 100% tariffs on Russia, it’s tariffs on their fossil fuel importers. Which again, is China, India, Turkey, the EU…]

Finally, you have the "sledgehammer" sanctions package currently in the Senate, which would authorize Trump to levy a 500% import tariff on countries that import Russian fossil fuels. That's basically trying to hold a loaded gun to the head of China, India, and the EU.

That will totally PO China and India. Serge cautions:

Considering, just for example, that Trump initially tried to set the import tariff on China at 145% and then negotiated that down to 30%, it's really hard to imagine him blowing up the entire system by slapping a fresh 500% on them just over Ukraine. Lindsay Graham likes the idea because he's a bloodthirsty, unreconstructed golem, but the number is just so far outside the bounds of what Trump has been working towards on tariffs that it does not come across as a serious policy.

So, bottom line: Ukraine should get partial replacement of its air defense with Euro Patriots to be replaced by new orders, Trump's "major announcement" is another tariff on Russia that doesn't do anything, and the war party in the Senate wants to blow up the international trading system with enormous tariffs on China, India, and the EU because they have the audacity to import fossil fuels.

https://wsj.com/politics/policy/patriot-system-will-be-sent-to-ukraine-trump-says-361165ef