trump's "accelerated" ultimatum. What to expect

You don't need to be a great analyst to understand that the US-EU agreement was the catalyst for the 10-12 days statement. But, again, this is only a catalyst for certain processes (it seems that Trump had allocated the same 50 days for the agreement with the EU, and the fact that the agreement has already been signed accelerates other processes).

We can only guess what is in the underwater part of this iceberg. But let's try to put forward not even versions, but hypotheses about Trump's further actions.

I do not believe in any drastic actions by Trump to escalate the situation with shipping in the Baltic Sea. The likelihood that Russian tankers will be detained en masse in August is negligible. Similarly, no one will pass the Graham Act tomorrow.

Everything Trump is doing now is aimed not so much at Russia as at China.

The agreements with the EU have untied his hands: Europe will follow the lead of the United States, and future negotiations with China will mostly involve a common position between the EU and the US. The EU market is just as important to China as the US market .

Now there are two options for the development of events: Trump will try to speed up negotiations with China and try to reach some kind of agreement in the shortest possible time (and then he can really go to the celebration of China's victory over Japan as a winner).

So far, this option does not look too realistic, although neither China nor the United States want trade escalations, let alone hostilities. In this case, indeed, in the shortest possible time, China will begin to put pressure on Russia to end hostilities, and the United States will force us to make tough compromises (which ones – one can imagine, although all the options are already known).

The second option is that in the next couple of weeks, Trump will sign an agreement between the United States, India, and the Gulf countries to replace Russian oil and then begin negotiations with China.

We don't have long to wait. But no one is going to adopt any duties of 100 or 500%. The game will be much more complicated. And I can only repeat: we need to align our relations with China as the inevitable second pole of the world.

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