Over the last year, I have been surprised to learn that in some quarters I am considered a “Never Trumper.” That is ridiculous: I have voted for Trump three times, and through the fall of 2024 I had a Trump sign in my front yard. I have commented on Trump’s actions many times, probably in the hundreds, and I would guess my assessments have been 85% positive. And I am wildly enthusiastic about the early days of Trump’s current administration, as Power Line readers know.
But: Trump’s recent actions with regard to Ukraine are hard to explain. They have caused great consternation in Europe (not, I know, the acid test). Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in the Telegraph, one of Europe’s most pro-Trump papers:
Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.
The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.
The Telegraph has obtained a draft of the pre-decisional contract, marked “Privileged & Confidential’ and dated Feb 7 2025. It states that the US and Ukraine should form a joint investment fund to ensure that “hostile parties to the conflict do not benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine”.
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The US will take 50pc of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from extraction of resources, and 50pc of the financial value of “all new licences issued to third parties” for the future monetisation of resources. There will be “a lien on such revenues” in favour of the US. “That clause means ‘pay us first, and then feed your children’,” said one source close to the negotiations.It states that “for all future licences, the US will have a right of first refusal for the purchase of exportable minerals”. Washington will have sovereign immunity and acquire near total control over most of Ukraine’s commodity and resource economy. The fund “shall have the exclusive right to establish the method, selection criteria, terms, and conditions” of all future licences and projects. And so forth, in this vein.
How extreme is that?
If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty, later whittled down at the London Conference in 1921, and by the Dawes Plan in 1924. At the same time, he seems willing to let Russia off the hook entirely.
Ukraine has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in resisting the Russian invasion, and its economy is a shambles. Most observers (including me) would say that Ukraine represented the West in its defensive war against an aggressor. So, why such a punitive attitude on the part of the Trump administration?
Meanwhile, President Trump has been negotiating with Russia without consulting Ukraine. Why? Many observers are asking, whose side is he on? President Zelensky has canceled his trip to Saudi Arabia as a protest against Trump’s purporting to settle the future of Ukraine without consulting Ukrainians.
Hopefully this will come out alright in the end. But on what planet does it make sense for President Trump to allow himself to be seen as an agent of Vladimir Putin in dealing with our ally, Ukraine? This strikes me as an unforced error of the sort to which Trump has too often been prone.
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