Posted on 01/24/2025 5:46:44 PM PST by canuck_conservative
Russian exports are down by over half from 2/2022
If 47 can convince his friend Modi and Xi to stop buying Russian oil, it could be the nail in the coffin for Putin...
In addition, Putin’s main focus is geostrategic, not the economy. He has shown that Russia is willing to absorb economic setbacks and has ways of getting around sanctions - with countries that are not in the US orbit.
Why not send them a few million free Operation Warp Speed COVID VACCINE Booster, v.10? That should do the trick.
Putin didn’t put sanctions on Europe. The US blew up the Nordstream pipeline that was sending cheap Russian natural gas to Germany and other EU countries. The US, a NATO ally, blew up the energy source that was cheapest for most European countries. Now that is a sanction. Then, the US started selling LNG to replace the natural gas, but a 10 times the price. Ouch. That hurts from an ally.
Trump playing the globalists, leftists, neocons and Zeepers like like a fiddle.
Trump was going to ask for that regardless of the war in Ukraine.
He will implement tariffs (if necessary) regardless of the war in Ukraine.
Passing all that off as punishment of Russia nullifies criticism from the Democrats and media.
Cutting off Russian oil supply won’t lower prices.
India is making $$$ buying Russian oil and refined products and re-selling. Yeah, maybe the USA can threaten them with sanctions and get them to stop. But Trump is already committed to a major tariff war with Canada and the EU and China. Extending too much economic pressure on too many competitors at once is just bad strategy.
Get them one at a time.
Trade and re-shoring manufacturing are much more important for America than these overseas wars not involving the USA.
And, we have half the people on this site planning an oil blockade as part of an anti-China campaign. And then at the same time they expect China to stop buying Russian oil in order to stop the Ukraine war. 🙃
I want to know what all these Russian and Ukrainian trolls are going to do when the war is over?
I have been on this forum since 2005.
I had never seen the influx of blatant propaganda until the Ukraine war.
Maybe is was just not as in your face as it has been lately.
Yeah, we’re talking two different things. I’m talking about stop buying Russian oil to starve their war coffers, not about lowering prices...
But oil is fungible, and this is the point.
Say China and India stop buying Russian oil, and they buy from someone else.
Then the “someone else” buys Russian oil.
And nothing has been achieved except some additional shipping costs.
Trump has to be realistic about the leverage he has here.
China is not going to buy even MORE of their oil from the Mid-East and make themselves even more vulnerable to a USA oil blockade in order to stop a war in Ukraine - when China probably wants a Russian win anyway, to weaken the West.
At least until very recently, the oil and gas sanctions on Russia didn’t really have teeth, and were fairly easily worked around. However, it appears that the Chinese and Indians are honoring the most recent (Jan. 10) sanctions against Russian grey fleet tankers, and those sanctions are “toothier” if the West follows through on implementation, as Trump did with the sanctions on Iran in his 1st term.
https://gcaptain.com/china-and-india-scramble-for-crude-as-sanctioned-russian-tankers-turn-back/
Also...
Only a few types of munitions stocks are low. We have entire classes of weapons not even touched yet, like large inventories of standoff weapons that can be delivered by F-16’s. We could announce training of an additional 300 Ukie F-16 pilots, plus support personnel, and begin prep of 200 planes - easily spared from reserve stocks. Just the threat of sending those would be a significant “lever”. So would other anti-ship weapons to finish off what’s left of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. A “leak” or two about an upcoming demise of the Kerch Bridge and the bridges of the rail line in SE Ukraine, to Crimea, might mysteriously appear. Parts from the Euros for ever more long range Ukie drones are going to happen anyway, unless a deal is done.
When it comes to US oil production, the question again is mainly whether Putin takes seriously Trump’s intention to drive oil prices down. If that “threat” is taken seriously, there is your leverage. IMO, to survive politically, Trump HAS to get oil prices down by early 2026, to curb inflation, so, THIS threat is one Trump has to be doubly motivated to make good on. Therefor it is not a potential throwaway or negotiating point: it simply makes Putin’s FUTURE position less tenable.
Of course, getting inflation down quickly is where Saudi Arabia in particular comes into play in both arenas (the war and the global economic situation), but why would Saudi want to increase production to lower prices, unless there is a global recession on the way? Saudi has already seen the futility of trying to drive other producers out of the supply side, with its own increased volumes: The results are fleeting. So, the question with regard to Saudi is what do they want more than money? What can Trump offer them? Missile defense systems? Erasure of the Iranian mullahs? Neuter the Houthis?
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately.”
We’ve heard that before.
The 3rd parties here, Turkey, for example, are again generally not going to risk losing Western financial largesse.
Trump 45's sanctions on Iran did have the additional benefit of weak demand during COVID. Global demand is weak now too, just not THAT weak...
One important difference in this case is that the primary sanctions are not designed to reduce Russian exports, they are designed to cap the price of Russian exports. If I'm Chairman Xi, what's there to complain about?
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I left out of my last post: I expect the eventual "next step" may be for the Euro's to detain non-Russian flagged grey fleet ships passing through the Baltic Sea on safety and environmental grounds. We all know how slow Euro bureaucracy is. The inspections will take weeks or even months, even if some of these creaky old ships manage to eventually pass.
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