Since the 2022 military campaign in Ukraine, Russia has faced sweeping Western sanctions and a war against a Ukrainian military armed by Washington and its allies. In response, Moscow has deepened ties with China, its key geopolitical partner, to withstand US-led Western pressure.

Now, with Donald Trump’s return to office, Vladimir Putin may feel that Moscow is once again benefiting from global shifts. Trump’s Ukraine peace proposal has softened Western pressure, while Washington’s trade war with China presents new opportunities, positioning Russia as a potential partner for both rival powers.

From a Russian perspective, the US-China tariff war is “tactically positive and strategically problematic,” says Sergei Markov, a Russian political scientist and former adviser to Putin.

“Tactically, this tariff war between the US and China could have good results for Russia” because it will increase differences within the Western coalition, leading to more friction between Europe, which is the main enemy of Moscow at the current stage, and Washington, according to Markov. 

The Russian analyst finds US-China trade war both “quite predictable” and “inevitable”. 

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to raise tariffs on China and the EU. “He promised to raise tariffs, and when he became president, he did. It’s predictable,” Markov tells TRT World.

“This kind of trade war is inevitable because the US and China are locked in a growing competition,” Markov says. “The Chinese economy was winning, and that threatened Washington's global leadership. Trump’s tariffs are a way to counter that trajectory.”

Potential benefits

Markov argues that the trade war could make both the U.S. and China more interested in developing economic and political cooperation with Moscow. He adds that amid the growing tariff tensions Beijing will be more interested in buying more oil, gas and coal from Russia.

Even the US, which has almost zero relations with Moscow, might be interested in developing cooperation in key sectors like rare earth metals with Russia, says Markov, referring to the fact that Beijing imposed a kind of economic embargo on exporting many rare earth minerals and magnets from China to the US in a retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. 

“Russia has a lot of rare earth materials which the US needs for its high-tech economy,” says the former presidential adviser to the Kremlin. As a result, the US can buy Russian rare earth minerals, but this move will serve to “undermine” the general Western sanctions regime against Moscow, according to Markov. 

China is the biggest producer of refining rare earth minerals, a complicated and costly process with environmental implications, processing more than 90 percent of its global and national supplies. Rare earth minerals are crucial in the production of semiconductors, electric vehicles and smartphones. 

Trump initially imposed tariffs on over 180 countries, including US allies, but, after facing a clear opposition from even his billionaire allies like Bill Ackman, put a 90-day pause, easing them to 10% for most – excluding China.

Russia was not on the list, partly because, as Trump said, “we’re not doing business, essentially, with Russia, because they’re at war.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that existing US sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade.”

Yasar Sari, a scholar at the Haydar Aliyev Eurasian Research Centre at Ibn Haldun University, sees the recent increase in high-level and face-to-face meetings between top Russian and American officials as a sign that both sides aim to develop not only political but also economic ties. 

“The choice of Dmitriev for Putin’s point man with Washington shows Russia aims to develop economic ties with the US,” Sari tells TRT World.  Early this month, Russia’s Stanford-educated envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, met Steve Witkoff, one of the Trump administration’s top envoys, who leads talks from Gaza to Ukraine, in Washington. 

Sari believes that this meeting signifies a potential framework for growing economic ties between the two sides. In recent weeks, Dmitriev said that Russia and the US can work on different fronts from investment, rare earths and energy to the Arctic, space and cooperation with Elon Musk.

The Turkish analyst also sees a potential positive for Russia in China-US trade war because it would change Russia’s “junior partner role” with Beijing, which is the senior partner compared to Moscow’s weak economic posture. “US-China trade war, which provides different pathways and options to Moscow, will help Russia increase its leverage against Beijing,” says Sari. 

“To put it in a caricature,” Sari quips, “Putin enjoys watching the fierce boxing match between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump while smoking a cigar he brought from Cuba.”

Potential risks

Despite the upsides, Markov warns of negative outcomes from the US-China trade war which, if prolonged, could lead to a global economic downturn. That could lead to lower oil prices, a worrying aspect for Russia's economy where energy accounts for 30% of budget revenue.

The drop in oil prices will lead to an income gap for Moscow, a negative economic outcome the Kremlin does not want to face at a time when the country faces Western sanctions and is at war with Ukraine, according to Markov. 

The Russian analyst also predicts that Trump tariffs might lead to a rapprochement between Europe and Beijing, potentially weakening China’s economic alignment with Russia.

But he also sees possibilities in which Europe, which received much of its gas supply from Russia prior to the Ukraine war, might decrease its rivalry with Russia. 

"Our economic authorities are monitoring this situation very closely and, of course, are doing and will do everything necessary to minimize the consequences of this international economic storm for our economy," said Dmitry Peskov, the long term Kremlin spokesman.

Overall, ongoing “big quick changes” across the globe have many questionable parts and need “a lot of evaluations”, says Markov, referring to how Trump’s tariffs and Chinese retaliation have turned global politics into a total mess. 

Like other countries, “Russia will face new problems because global economics will be more divided as different business interactions will encounter more obstacles” due to political pressures and growing geopolitical conflicts, says Markov. 

The ongoing crisis demands from global business corporations to adapt “new patterns of behaviour and innovative models of actions”, says the Russian analyst, drawing attention to increasing geopolitical risks, which have become even more revealing and fragmented with Trump’s tariffs against many countries. 

In a world where business interactions are reshaped by political forces, Markov adds: “This is a new world nobody is prepared for, including Russian business corporations and the Russian government.”