Donald Trump’s shift in stance on Ukraine has been a long time in the making. Much has changed since the humiliating scolding of Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office in late February, when Trump even blamed him for the Russian invasion. In the meantime, the Republican has gradually shifted toward much more moderate positions — at times even resembling those of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden. Vladimir Putin has gone from being a friend with whom Trump never fully lost contact, even during his four years out of the White House, to someone who “talks a lot,” who is “killing a lot of people,” and with whom Trump now says he is “very unhappy.”

The latest episode in this shift came on Monday, when Trump — flanked by his loyal sidekick and sycophant Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary General — threatened secondary tariffs of up to 100% on Russia if Moscow doesn’t reach a peace deal within 50 days. It’s certainly a strong move, but one that financial markets don’t seem to believe: if they did, oil and natural gas prices would be skyrocketing — anticipating a massive exit of Russian energy from the market — instead of falling, as they did on Monday and continue to do this Tuesday.

“The oil market doesn’t buy the secondary tariff threats,” stressed analysts at Dutch bank ING in a quick note to clients. “The lack of any immediate action and the belief that these threats won’t be carried out help to explain the market reaction.” After dropping nearly 2% on Monday, just hours after Trump made his threat, Brent Crude remains in the red this Tuesday — a trend mirrored by gas prices.

A secondary tariff is, essentially, a levy on countries that purchase goods from a specific nation. Unlike a conventional tariff — which in this case would mean taxing Russian exports — the approach chosen by the White House aims to place all the pressure on nations that are the biggest buyers of Russian goods. “It’s about tariffs on countries like India and China that are buying their oil,” clarified U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker a few hours later. The purchase of Russian crude has been banned in the U.S., the EU, and the rest of the G7 since 2022, shortly after the start of the Ukraine invasion. Natural gas, however, continues to flow freely.

Secondary tariffs, then, make perfect sense in this context: a conventional tariff would have little impact, since Russian exports to the U.S. are minimal — just $3 billion in 2024, according to U.S. government data — a third less than a year earlier and, remarkably, just one-tenth of the 2021 figure, before any sanctions were imposed on the Russian oil sector. Whether Trump’s threat will materialize remains to be seen — especially since it would mean the affected countries would have to pay a duty equivalent to the full value of the imported product, a truly staggering penalty.

Venezuela

The Venezuela precedent is the clearest test case for the threat against Russia. Trump’s own Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick used that very example on Monday to illustrate what may lie ahead. “It’s economic sanction,” said Lutnick. “He [Trump] said to Venezuela. He said, If you do business and you buy Venezuelan oil, right, your country will pay a tariff, right?”

What happened with the Latin American country, however, suggests caution is warranted. At the end of March, the Trump administration floated the possibility of imposing secondary tariffs on Caracas, but no developments have followed since then.

“Despite the fact that the threat remains, no country has been sanctioned for buying Venezuelan oil,” said Jorge León, vice president and head of oil analysis at the Norwegian consulting firm Rystad Energy, by phone. “It’s true that there are few Venezuelan barrels for export, around 200,000 per day. But one thing is also clear: China, its main buyer, has not been penalized in any way.” Spain, which until recently was the EU’s top importer of Venezuelan crude, has not purchased a single barrel from Venezuela since March.

No details

As often with Trump, the announcement came with few specifics, leaving plenty of room for speculation. Chief among the questions is whether the U.S. president would actually extend the proposed 100% tariff to European exports, given that the EU-27 still buy vast amounts of liquefied natural gas (LNG, which is shipped by sea) from Moscow. Although Brussels aims to fully eliminate Russian LNG by the end of 2027, last year alone it paid €23 billion ($26.7 billion) to Russia for it.

India and China would be the most affected by the potential 100% secondary tariff — for two key reasons: their extremely close trade ties with the United States (they are, respectively, the second and ninth largest exporters to the U.S.) and their dominant role as importers of Russian energy.

India has dramatically increased its purchases of Russian crude since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. So much so that, so far in 2025, one-third of the oil consumed by the world’s most populous country is now of Russian origin — compared to just 2% in 2021. The 100,000 barrels India bought from Russia that year surged to 1.9 million in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Russian oil sales to China — which remains its largest buyer and is currently negotiating to put an end to its trade war with the U.S. — have followed a similar, though less extreme, trend: rising from 1.6 million barrels per day in 2021 to 2.4 million in 2024. This growth has been fueled both by the vacuum left by the end of Western purchases and by the Kremlin’s need to slash prices in order to keep oil flowing to market.

“The U.S. president’s statements are very serious,” said Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday. Soon after, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took it a step further: “We want to understand what this 50-day reference means […] It’s clear that Trump is under enormous, frankly indecent pressure,” he said, naming the EU and NATO. “We’re already dealing with an unprecedented number of sanctions and managing well. I have no doubt we’ll handle these new measures too.”

His hope: that even if the U.S. ultimately follows through with its threat, neither China nor India will abandon what the Kremlin calls their “independent policy.” In other words, that they’ll keep buying Russian oil in large volumes.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

Eight months after being defeated by Ted Cruz in the Senate race, Colin Allred, 42, is back on the Texas political scene. The Democratic politician and former U.S. representative (2019–2025) has bounced back and announced a few weeks ago that he would run in his party’s primary in hopes of returning to Washington in the 2026 elections.

If chosen by his party for the race, his mission would be to unseat Republican John Cornyn, who has been in the Senate since 2002. Allred is the second candidate to officially announce his bid, and during these summer days marked by catastrophic floods that have left the state in mourning, he’s touring Texas — from Dallas to Houston, through San Antonio and Austin, all the way to the border cities of McAllen and Brownsville. It’s the start of a campaign with which, for the second time, he aims to break the decades-long Republican stronghold on Texas’ Senate seats in the capital.

The former NFL player and civil rights attorney is a well-known figure in Texas. Although he lost to Ted Cruz, who has been a senator in Washington since 2013, in the 2024 elections, Allred received 5.5 percentage points more votes than Kamala Harris did in the presidential race, which strengthens his profile. Preliminary polls also suggest that a bruising Republican primary between current Senator Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton could leave Allred particularly well positioned heading into the November 2026 midterms, where Democrats aim to claw back the Republicans’ razor-thin majority.

Allred speaks with EL PAÍS after an event at a packed community center in Houston, where attendees gathered to hear the imposing candidate in a blue shirt speak. “I want to tell you that I’m running again for one reason: because I don’t give up — and I know you don’t either,” he says to the applause of a crowd already beginning to gear up for the next election cycle.

Question: Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in 30 years. What’s your platform doing differently to change that pattern? How do you plan to stand out in a competitive primary?

Answer. I’m a fourth-generation Texan, so I know our history. And I also know that a lot of people are hungry for change. We need to make sure folks know that it’s not just about telling them, but showing them that we’re on their side. Particularly for the hardworking people who grew up like I did, being raised by a single mother, a public school teacher, knowing what it means to struggle. I want to make sure that everyone in that situation knows that I’m going to be a fighter for them. And that I care about our state. I’m in this to make sure that everyone has a chance to chase their version of the American dream. And I really think that will resonate.

Q. You say that an anti-corruption agenda is a central pillar of your campaign. What does it consist of, and how do you plan to implement it?

A. The problem with corruption is that it’s not just wrong, it costs working people dearly. We see that reflected in the special tax breaks and in this bill [Trump’s mega tax law] they just passed. That ends up costing all of us. And I think it also leads people to be more cynical about our democracy as a whole and to think that everyone is a crook.

That’s why I think we need to have a very specific plan to try to prevent this and reign this back in, but also to get people back to work for what they’re supposed to be doing: serving the people they represent, rather than themselves or their special interests. How are we going to implement that plan? Well, it’s about building public support. I don’t think it’s very hard not to support certain measures to prevent corruption. Once folks see there is another way, that will gain momentum.

Q. What is your proposal to alleviate the cost of living crisis in Texas, especially in housing, health care, and transportation?

A. When I was a kid, I was worried every time we went to the grocery store, wondering if we would have enough to pay for everything that week. I know what folks are going through. In the last election, working people were promised that the focus would be on lowering their costs. Instead, what we’ve seen is just the opposite. This bill that just passed is a big bust. It is going to raise costs for working people, kick people off their health care, all to cut taxes for the rich.

We need to address the affordability crisis from every possible angle. Regarding housing, we need more supply. When it comes to making sure that the dignity of work is respected, we can need to make sure that folks are being paid what they deserve, that they get the benefits of their labor, and hold accountable the price gougers who are trying to keep their costs artificially high.

I’ve always focused a lot on the costs of early childhood and child care, because we’re young parents, but also because I know that for many workers, one of their biggest costs is what they’ll do with their children. We lost a lot of childcare centers during the pandemic. Costs have gone up on the ones that are left. And early childhood care is incredibly expensive and difficult for working families. While it may not seem like it’s part of the affordability crisis, it’s one of the biggest costs folks have.

We have to expand healthcare and lower the cost. Too many people don’t have health insurance, or if they do, they can’t afford it. And that has many indirect costs. Medical debt is still one of our highest sources of bankruptcy. That’s not right. This bill is going to kick 1.7 million Texans off their healthcare. That’s not right.

Q. What is your position on guns?

A. I grew up around guns. I grew up going to camps where we learned how to handle a rifle responsibly. But we’re seeing too much daily violence and mass shootings, and there are important steps we can take. These steps have only been prevented by a corrupt system that is rigged in order to allow a special interest to prevent common-sense measures from passing. That’s part of the root issue: to achieve any of these things, you have to address what’s holding them back.

We often come back to how our campaigns are funded, how the system is broken, and what we can do to restore that structure — that your incentive is to do what’s right for the people you represent, not for special interests. I believe we can respect the Second Amendment while protecting our children.

Q. As the first Black Democratic Senate candidate, and a father, what does it mean to you to represent the diversity of Texas?

A. I’m incredibly proud of how diverse we are as a state. Our diversity is a strength for us. I’m not running to be the first Black senator; I’d just be where I was elected. But I hope kids can see the things I’ve done, from being a civil rights lawyer, to the NFL, to serving in Congress, to potentially being a U.S. senator. Know that I was raised by a single mother, that I come from public schools, and that they can do it too. We have to set up ladders of opportunity, so people can achieve their goals. If we do that, then it’s their responsibility to take advantage of it. But if we don’t provide them with those opportunities, then it’s on us that we have held them back.

Q. Texas is at the center of the immigration debate in the United States. What do you propose to maintain border security without compromising respect for migrants and human rights?

A. Well, my family is from Brownsville, a very typical Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border. I spent a lot of my childhood there. And I think we needed to do more to secure the border. We must have a secure border, but do it in a way that is consistent with our values, treating people the right way. Those values also mean that when we don’t do that, we lose something fundamental. How we treat others says more about us than it does about them.

We have a broken immigration system, and we need comprehensive reform that includes border security. The goal is also to bring folks out of the shadows and provide a path to citizenship for those who have been here for a while, followed the rules, and haven’t broken the law. We need to provide resources to a system so broken that it doesn’t have enough immigration judges. It doesn’t have the capacity to process people in a timely manner so we can maintain our asylum system, which also reflects our values.

Q. Regarding the recent floods in Texas, what do you propose to ensure that the response to these disasters does not repeat the same weaknesses that have become evident now?

A. What I’ve seen from spending six years on the House Infrastructure Committee is that when it comes to emergency, disaster, and extreme weather prevention, you need to have overlapping systems of notification. You have to have sirens, signs, cell phone notifications—everything possible to quickly provide information at a critical time. It does seem that there was some breakdown along that chain. It’s also true that we had key staffing positions that were not filled. Sometimes I think some of these positions are extra until a crisis hits, and then you need them.

There are mitigation steps that can be taken to ensure that, if it’s an area that floods, we can try to make it safer. But I think the first requirement is to understand that we’re going to continually face more extreme weather events. We will have floods and hurricanes much more regularly. So we have to be prepared to protect both people and property. For me, that has to start with understanding and accepting the science behind it.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition

Time is ticking and stakes are mounting as Argentina faces setback after setback in the case opened in the U.S. justice system over the 2012 expropriation of the YPF oil company. On Monday, a lower court rejected the defense’s request and upheld the order to transfer 51% of YPF shares held by the Argentine state to the so-called vulture funds that sued the country and obtained a favorable ruling. The government of Javier Milei has until Thursday, to either reach an agreement with the plaintiffs or hand over the YPF shares to them.

The de facto privatization ordered by the judge would be part of the $16.1 billion payment the Argentine government was ordered to make in 2023 for failing to offer equal treatment to all shareholders in 2012, when it seized the YPF stake from Spain’s Repsol without making a tender offer to minority shareholders Petersen and Eton Park. If it does not surrender the shares, the Argentine government risks being declared in contempt. The Javier Milei administration has already appealed the decision, but it is unknown whether it will rule before the 72 hours granted by Judge Loretta Preska expire.

Judge Preska, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, ruled on Monday against Argentina, arguing that it “made no effort to satisfy the conditions required by the court” in its ruling two weeks ago. The Treasury Attorney General’s Office, the agency in charge of Argentina’s defense, had requested a stay of the order, arguing that irreparable harm would result, but Preska said in her brief that “any alleged harm arises directly from the Republic’s own actions in delaying and attempting to evade its obligations under the judgment.”

The narrow margin granted by Preska puts Argentina in a tough spot. A meeting between the defense attorneys and the funds is scheduled for Tuesday, but experts believe it is very unlikely they will reach an agreement, despite the mounting court pressure on the Argentine government.

At the time of the nationalization in 2012, 57.5% of YPF was held by the Spanish energy giant Repsol, 25.5% by Petersen Energía Inversora and Petersen Energía — two Spanish companies belonging to Argentina’s Eskenazi family — and 17% by minority investors. In 2014, the Argentine government agreed to pay Repsol $5 billion for the 51% of the shares it had expropriated.

Burford Capital, a fund that that buys the rights to litigation from bankrupt companies to pursue large-sum claims, purchased a large portion of YPF shares held in Spain by the insolvent Petersen Group companies, and filed a lawsuit in the United States with Eton Park, one of the minority shareholders.

In 2023, Preska ordered Argentina to pay close to $14.4 billion to Burford Capital and another $1.7 billion to Eton Capital, arguing that the Argentine government should have offered the same treatment it gave Repsol to the remaining shareholders at the time of the expropriation, as established by YPF’s bylaws. If it receives the compensation, Burford would retain 70% of its share, and the other 30% would go to the Eskenazi family companies.

Preska excluded the oil company, which retains 49% of the shares in private hands, from the litigation. This means that the state must assume payment if the ruling is final. The amount set by the judge is compounded by substantial interest, which increases by $2 million per day.

The Argentine government is unable to comply with the ruling. Not only because its international reserves are in the red, but also because the YPF nationalization law prohibits the executive branch from transferring expropriated shares without prior authorization from Congress.

A last-resort appeal

The arguments of Argentina’s successive defenses — which have changed with each of the three presidents of the last decade — have crashed against the wall of the U.S. lower courts. The defendant is now relying on appeals, but has indicated that it will go all the way to the Supreme Court if it obtains another unfavorable ruling.

Argentina is criticizing the amount of compensation, which more than triples the payment made to Repsol for 51% of its shares and even exceeds the company’s total market value. Another dismissed argument relates to the alleged corrupt origin of the shares. This suspicion led to a complaint filed with the Argentine courts in 2012 that has never been investigated and implicates the powerful Eskenazi family and its ties to the Kirchners, the presidential couple who governed Argentina for 12 years: Néstor Kirchner between 2003 and 2007, and his wife, Cristina Kirchner, for the following eight.

The Eskenazis, owners of businesses in the construction and banking sectors, acquired 15% of YPF in 2008 and an additional 10% in 2011 without making any outlay for these transactions, as it was agreed that they could pay with the dividends they received from the same company.

If the Eskenazis’ entry into YPF had been irregular, the subsequent purchase made by the Burford Fund would be void. The courts have shown no interest in clarifying this point: the complaint has been dormant in Argentine courts for over a decade. Only now, when time is running out, has it begun to awaken: prosecutor Ramiro González has requested preliminary evidence.

“At the very least, there was incompetence throughout the entire process, if not fraud,” warns former Energy Secretary Daniel Montamat, who believes the company should be subject to a thorough investigation by the Argentine justice system. Montamat, who chaired the Argentine oil company in the late 1980s, says he was surprised that Repsol allowed itself to be pressured into selling part of its shares to the Petersen group and was highly critical of the subsequent expropriation, which deepened investor distrust of Argentina.

The legal case in the United States has sparked a bitter political dispute just months before the legislative elections. Milei accused the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, the Peronist Axel Kicillof, of being directly responsible for the adverse ruling because he was the Minister of Economy at the time of the nationalization. Kicillof counterattacked by insinuating that Milei has ties to Burford and warning that YPF cannot be privatized by a foreign judge. The Argentine government has few options. No matter how much pressure the U.S. courts exert, it needs the support of the national Congress to transfer those shares.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition