President Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. Like everyone else, I hope that the meeting will go well and Putin agrees with a ceasefire as the first step in the direction of a peace agreement that will end the war in Russia-Ukraine.
If Vladimir Putin crimes himself, President Donald Trump can completely eliminate his economic and monetary spigot.
If someone can put an end to the war, Mr. Trump can. Like I said, Trump comes to this meeting with the wind on his back. He has had remarkable, successful domestic policy performance at home and abroad. He destroyed Iran internationally. And his extraordinary success in re -organizing world trade has made him the best known, most powerful and most popular person in the world. But I doubt that Vladimir Putin sees him in this way.
The former KGB agent is a megalomaniac who wants to expand what he believes is the historic Russian Empire. He doesn’t care that he killed citizens, women and children. Or their houses. Or their hospitals. He doesn’t care that at least 300,000 people died in this war. He brings in mercenary troops from North Korea, China and other communist Despotic countries to wage this insane war. He thought he could just invade Ukraine and conquer Kyiv in a few months, could take control of the entire country, but it turns out that he was badly calculated. He is not interested in all this lost blood or darling.
I say this not to mention it obvious, but to underline my personal vision that Putin is completely unreliable and will do everything to distract from a real ceasefire or permanent peace agreement. I sincerely hope I am wrong. I support what President Trump is trying to do. Trump is the peacemaker. Putin is the war criminal.
All of that saying, President Trump spoke with Alaska about the consequences such as Putin misconduct as he always does and said that there will be “serious” economic consequences if they do not agree to end the war.
If Putin crimes himself, President Trump has an arsenal of trade and financial weapons that will suffocate and fully ruin what is left of the Russian economy. It is an economy with one horses based on oil and gas. So, Mr. Trump can first considerably increase the rates for anyone who buys Russian oil or other Russian goods.
He has already punished India for buying Russian oil, by hitting a rate of 25% on the Indian sale to the US – in addition to the earlier rate of 25%. You could increase that to a rate of 100%. China is a large copper of Russian oil and goods. They should not be immune to a large tariff walk. In other words, you want to do business with Russia, you can’t do business with the US
And then there are secondary sanctions. The same idea: you buy Russian oil or other raw materials, you can’t do business with the United States. In other words, we say that we not only sanction your company with Russia, but the secondary sanction is also a company with the US and financial, we can enforce this. We can enforce this by blowing Russia completely out of the dollar payment system.
First there is the Swift Payment Messaging Ledger. All dollar payments, including all international banks, must be registered. So we will immediately know who Russia helps. Then we can prevent the transaction; the actual payment. We do this via the Federal Reserve Wire, the actual payment system, the actual transfer of the money.
If the American or foreign banks want to sneak through a Russia-related payment, they can be refused access to the FED wire, which will eliminate the entire transaction.
The Swift system and the FED wire are of course based on dollars. But more than 90% of world trade transactions are based on dollars, either directly or indirectly. Think of China, India, but somehow they will pay through the dollar.
So President Trump can in principle eliminate the economic and financial water of Russia. He can close the Russian spigot.
Does Putin know this? Well, I don’t know. But he will soon find out if he will not close a deal with President Trump.
