Trump Held the Power to Crush Russia’s Economy—Here’s Why He Didn’t Pull the Trigger

Geopolitical brinkmanship meets economic calculus—and the math didn’t justify the move.

The Unused Leverage

Sanctions? Energy wars? Trump had bigger guns. Insider sources suggest he weighed options that could’ve sent the ruble into freefall—then walked away. The why remains murky: backchannel deals, market fallout fears, or just saving ammo for later?

Markets Breathe (For Now)

Russian oligarchs aren’t popping champagne—just quietly moving assets into crypto and Dubai real estate. Because nothing says ‘stable economy’ like billionaires hedging with speculative assets and overpriced sandcastles.

The Cynical Take

Sometimes the most powerful move is not playing. Or maybe it’s leaving the grenade unpinned… until someone pays you enough to pull it. Classic strongman economics—create the crisis, then charge admission to avoid it.

Trump could hit Russia’s energy revenues with secondary sanctions

Before the meeting, Trump had floated secondary sanctions on Russia’s oil sector. Oil and gas supply most of the Kremlin’s money, a weak point Washington could exploit.

Targeting the “shadow fleet” of tankers that quietly MOVE Russian crude could trigger a “deep financial crisis” for the war economy, said Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former chief economist at the Institute of International Finance.

He noted that after the Biden administration sanctioned nearly 200 ships in January, just before Trump returned to office, activity by those vessels collapsed. Yet another 359 ships already blacklisted by the European Union or United Kingdom have not been hit by U.S. measures.

“Sanctioning these ships would be a hammer blow to the Russian war machine,” Brooks wrote. “There would undoubtedly be a sharp fall in the Urals oil price, reducing the FLOW of hard currency to the Russian state, and the Ruble would most likely depreciate significantly.”

Alaska session buys Putin time on Ukraine front

Foreign-policy analysts said the Alaska session amounted to a win for Putin, who avoided immediate punishment and gained time for his forces to push for more gains in Ukraine.

Even so, Melinda Haring, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, stressed that Trump still holds powerful tools.

“Let’s hope that Trump sees through Putin’s endless appetite to talk and tires of the Russian dictator’s pseudo-historical lectures,” she wrote. “Trump can squeeze the Russians; he seems to forget that the United States holds the cards, not Moscow.”

Russia’s finances show strain. Oil and gas revenue fell 27% in July from a year earlier, and war spending is widening the budget gap.

The National Wealth Fund, a key reserve, has shrunk from $135 billion in January 2022 to $35 billion by May and could be exhausted later this year, according to recent estimates.

“Russia’s economy is fast approaching a fiscal crunch that will encumber its war effort,” economist and Russia scholar Anders Åslund wrote last week. “Though that may not be enough to compel Putin to seek peace, it does suggest that the walls are closing in on him.”

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