WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 100 per cent “secondary tariffs” on Russia if a deal on Ukraine is not reached within 50 days.
During his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the White House on Monday (local time), Trump expressed disappointment with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin and threatened to impose severe tariffs if there is no deal within 50 days.
He said, “We are very unhappy, I am with Russia. But, we will discuss that maybe a different day. But, we’re very, very unhappy with them, and we’re going to be doing very severe tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. Tariffs at about 100 per cent. You’d call them secondary tariffs. You know what that means. But today, we’re going to talk about something else. And as you know, we’ve spent USD 350 billion, approximately, on this war with Russia and Ukraine and would like to see it end. It wasn’t my war. It was Biden’s war. It’s not my war.”
“I’m trying to get you out of it. And we want to see it end and I’m disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn’t seem to get there. So, based on that, we’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal in 50 days. It’s very simple and they’ll be at 100 per cent and that’s the way it is. It can be more simple. It’s just the way it is. I hope we don’t have to do it. But regardless, we are going to be, we make the greatest military equipment in the world, whether it’s missiles,” he added.
Trump also unveiled a deal under which NATO will buy arms from the US and then distribute them to Ukraine amid the ongoing war with Russia.