Double standards: On the Trump diesel deal with Russia

Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed an additional 25% tariff on India over India’s oil purchases from Russia. Peter Navarro, Mr. Trump’s trade czar, even called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “Modi’s war”, saying India was funding the Russian aggression through energy deals. Last month, Mr. Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act into law, giving him the power to impose up to 100% tariffs on countries buying Russian energy, including India and China. And then, last week, Mr. Trump announced a deal to buy Russian diesel — releasing 300,000 tonnes immediately to the “American and global marketplace”, followed by 5,00,000 tonnes in November. Immediately after the announcement, the Treasury Department suspended sanctions on Russian diesel exports until April 7, 2027. Mr. Trump’s flip-flop is a lesson for countries such as India, which have been criticised and penalised for trading with Russia. The latest policy switch also exposes the incoherence in western strategic thinking. The West imposed sanctions on Russia’s energy sector to weaken Vladimir Putin’s “war machine”. Four years later, the U.S. began bombing Iran. When the Iran war drove up fuel prices, Washington temporarily eased sanctions on Russian fuel before striking a deal with Moscow.

Beyond the hypocrisy and strategic folly of the U.S. decisions, Mr. Trump’s diesel deal also marks the ineffectiveness of the western sanctions regime. When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, the West adopted a two-pronged response: weaken the Russian economy through sanctions and weaken the Russian military in Ukraine by arming Kyiv. The sanctions were a double-edged sword, hurting the Russian economy, but the curtailment of trade between Russia and Europe has also plunged European economies, particularly Germany, into deep crises. To offset the impact of the sanctions, Moscow looked east where China and India were willing to buy discounted Russian fuel. The episode also underscores the changes in the economic landscape. Mr. Trump’s U-turn leaves Ukraine and Europe in a spot, at a time when Moscow is escalating its bombardment of Ukraine and testing NATO’s resolve through grey-zone tactics. If Brussels thinks that prolonging the war would serve its strategic goal of bleeding Russia dry in Ukraine, it may be making a mistake, as Mr. Trump seems less interested in NATO’s collective defence or in the defence of Kyiv. Instead, their focus must shift to finding a diplomatic way out. If Mr. Trump can reach a diesel deal with Mr. Putin amid the war, he should work with the warring parties, his allies in Europe and his new partner in Moscow, to secure a ceasefire and ease Russia-NATO tensions. In the meantime, the U.S. and Europe could stop moralising to the Global South for doing trade with Russia.