With Trump, sometimes it’s hard to tell what his next move will be. Today, he is announcing tough tariffs on India, 25 percent starting this Friday. India is a top-ten trading partner. We often think of India as a potential ally and hedge against a rising China, but India has maintained a relatively independent foreign policy, trying not to find itself entirely enmeshed by the American-led world order or the revisionist powers.

That means it purchases a lot of energy from Russia and generally has good relations with the Russians. And Trump singled them out for doing so in his announcement, framing the policy move as a kind of secondary sanction related to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Twenty-five percent is higher than tariffs he’s imposed on other Asian nations.

I can’t think of a policy with a greater record of failure than economic sanctions. Secondary sanctions in which you punish the friends of your foes, who might have recently thought of themselves as your friends, seems especially unlikely to drive Moscow to second thoughts.

But, as I’ve said before, Trump is moving like lightening. And his severe announcements today are often the prelude to some kind of negotiation for a new arrangement tomorrow. He may be throwing a bone to the Ukraine hawks and a flare at Putin, but still mainly intends these tariffs as a negotiating lever to lower India’s trade barriers.