All theater. Trump is just trying to show he’s as tough with Vlad as he is with Z. Vlad knows this. It’s all PR. The world knows who doesn’t want peace and why. But Vlad holds all the cards.
Oil is everything.
China and India. Buyers of Russian oil, and others from them.
People have to get it through there minds there is no excess capacity. If you think you can stop China from buying Russian oil, and there is nowhere else for them to get oil in the amounts in question, then . . . because oil is everything, the choice is forced on them to buy Russian oil and endure the US tariffs.
In a world of scarcity, there is no choice.
Buy from the US? US net exports of oil (not all liquids, still a substantial deficit of all liquids) are about 1.1 million bpd and that amount already has customers. China’s oil deficit (consumption - production) is 10 million bpd. A huge chunk from Russia.
Bottom line. Oil is everything. There is nowhere else for China to get oil. People starve in China without oil to plant food and transport to grocery store shelves. They do not starve if they stop shipping to Walmart.