If Putin Misbehaves, Trump Can Completely Turn Off His Economic and Monetary Spigot

Right this moment President Trump is meeting with Vladimir Putin at Anchorage.Like everyone, I hope the meeting goes well and Mr. Putin agrees to a cease-fire as the first step toward a peace deal that will end the Russia-Ukraine war.If anybody can negotiate an end to the war, Mr. Trump can. As I have said, Mr. Trump comes to this meeting with the wind at his back.He’s had remarkably successful domestic policy achievements at home and abroad. Internationally, he obliterated Iran. And his extraordinary success in reordering world trade has made him the best known, most powerful, and most popular person on the planet.Yet I doubt that Mr. Putin sees him this way.The ex-KGB agent is a megalomaniac who wants to extend what he believes is the historical Russian empire.He doesn’t much care that he’s been murdering civilian men, women, and children. Or destroying their homes. Or their hospitals. He doesn’t much care that at least 300,000 have died in this war.He’s bringing in mercenary troops from North Korea, Communist China, and other despotic countries to wage this insane war.He thought he could just invade Ukraine and capture Kyiv in a couple of months, take control of all the land, but turns out he miscalculated badly.He has no interest in all this lost blood or treasure.I say this not to state the obvious, but to underscore my personal view that Mr. Putin is completely untrustworthy, and will do anything to distract from a real cease-fire or permanent peace deal.I sincerely hope I’m wrong. I support what Mr. Trump is trying to do.Mr. Trump is the peacemaker. Mr. Putin is the war criminal.All that said, feature what Mr. Trump said on the plane to Alaska on the consequences if Mr. Putin misbehaves like he always does.A reporter asked: “You had said earlier this week that Putin would face severe consequences if you get the sense from him that he’s not interested. What do you mean by that?” Mr. Trump replied: “Economically severe. Yes. It will be very severe. I’m not doing this for my health, okay? I don’t need it.”If Mr. Putin does misbehave, Mr. Trump has an arsenal of trade and financial weapons that will choke off and totally ruin what’s left of the Russian economy.It’s a one-horse economy based on oil and gas.So Mr. Trump can first significantly hike tariffs on anybody who purchases Russian oil or other Russian goods.He’s already punished India for buying Russian oil, by slapping a 25 percent tariff on Indian sales to America — on top of the earlier 25 percent tariff.You could raise that to a 100 percent tariff. China is a big buyer of Russian oil and goods. They should not be immune to a major tariff hike.In other words, if you want to do business with Russia, then you can’t do business with America.And then there are secondary sanctions.The idea there, similarly, is that if you buy Russian oil or other commodities, you cannot do any business with the United States.In other words, we’re saying not only are we sanctioning your business with Russia, the secondary sanctions apply to any business with America.And financially, we can enforce this. We can enforce this by blowing Russia completely out of the dollar payments system.First there’s the Swift payment messaging ledger. All dollar payments, including all the international banks, must be recorded.So we’ll know right away who’s helping Russia.Then we can actually prevent the transaction; the actual payment.We do that through the Federal Reserve wire, which is the actual payments system, the actual transfer of the money. If American or foreign banks want to sneak through a Russia-related payment, they could be denied access to the Fed wire. Which shuts down the whole transaction.The Swift system and the Fed wire are, to be sure, dollar based. Yet more than 90 percent of world trading transactions are dollar based either directly or indirectly. Think of China, India, but one way or another they are going to pay through the dollar.So, Mr. Trump can basically turn Russia’s economic and financial water off.He can close the Russian spigot.Does Mr. Putin know this? Well, I don’t know. Yet he will shortly find out if he doesn’t make a deal with Mr. Trump.From Mr. Kudlow’s broadcast on Fox Business Network.

If Putin Misbehaves, Trump Can Completely Turn Off His Economic and Monetary Spigot

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