Tariffs and the psychodrama of Trump diplomacy

A bleached white conference room, somewhere near Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. On one side sits Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader, in his soldier-boy outfit. On the other, Russian President Vladimir Putin in dark suit and tie. And in the middle, a beaming President Donald J. Trump. “People said this could never happen,” he says, as Zelensky and Putin stare awkwardly at the floor. “But it’s a beautiful thing.” A White House memo lands in inboxes across the world: “THE PEACEMAKER-IN-CHIEF…”

Pure fantasy, perhaps, but Trump does have an almost cosmic ability to get what he wants – and he really wants to end the war in Ukraine.

Last night, having spent weeks telling the world how “disappointed” he was with Putin, Trump abruptly announced “great progress” in US-Russia dialogue. His special envoy, Steve Witkoff, had just spent several hours talking to Putin in Moscow, and it promptly emerged that Trump and Putin could meet as early as next week for a preliminary sit-down ahead of a possible three-way session between Trump, Putin and Zelensky. Putin and Trump have not met since their infamous encounter in Helsinki in 2018 and, then as now, European leaders will be very nervous about the two men getting on. On the other hand, as Trump has always said, he just wants “people to stop dying.” And if he can achieve a meaningful peace deal in Ukraine, he should perhaps be rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize that everyone says he craves.

Call it the psychodrama – not madman – theory of international relations. The personal is political and, as we’ve seen with Kim Jong-un, Emmanuel Macron, Zelensky and now Putin, Trump likes falling out and making up with world leaders. It makes for great headlines, plus the emotional rollercoaster helps advance his agenda because statesmen have to worry about what’s in the news.

The difficulty is that Putin is an exceptionally cold fish who doesn’t care about being hated outside of Mother Russia. The reason earlier peace initiatives failed is that Putin is not losing the war. Putin could “tap,” as Trump put it, America along because, having largely frozen Russia out of the international community, the West doesn’t have much clout over him.

Trump understands the concept of leverage, which is why last month he agreed to provide new arms to Ukraine. That didn’t seem to intimidate Russia, so Trump also targeted India, the leading buyer of Russian seaborne crude oil, with punishment tariffs. And he ostentatiously dispatched two nuclear submarines towards Russia at the weekend.

The India tariffs, in particular, appear to have brought the Kremlin back towards the peace table. But who is playing whom? It’s possible that Putin believes Trump’s trade aggression is pushing America’s rivals closer together, which is very much in Russia’s interest. The Kremlin has long believed that America’s hegemony is waning and that, while Trump’s theatrics might dazzle the world, in the long run the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are in the ascendancy. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for instance, shows no sign of breaking off trade relations with Russia in the face of Trump’s threats.

“IT’S MIDNIGHT!!!” Trump barked on Truth Social at 11:58 p.m. ET last night, as his latest tariff program kicked into effect. “BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS ARE NOW FLOWING INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!”

If only things were that simple. It’s no coincidence that Trump’s most punitive duties are now being imposed on India, Brazil and South Africa (the China and Russia tariff deadlines are upcoming). The White House believes that America still has enough financial muscle to disrupt the BRICS and play them off against each other.

But, similar to Canada and Europe, the BRICS countries regard America as an increasingly unreliable mercantile power. The biggest downside to Trump’s tariffs, then, may turn out to be geo-strategic rather than economic – as a brave, new multipolar world increasingly tries to get along without America. Politics is personal. And the psychodrama is exhausting, after all.