Trump’s new 100% tariff on Russian oil buyers could devastate Hungary’s economy
American President Donald Trump has announced a potential 100% tariff on all countries importing Russian oil, setting a strict 50-day deadline for President Putin to end the military operations in Ukraine. If no ceasefire is reached, these tariffs would be enforced as a “secondary” economic sanction.
Trump would introduce 100% tariff on Russian oil
According to Világgazdaság, Trump expressed deep dissatisfaction with Putin’s reluctance to negotiate peace and declared that, beyond economic sanctions, he would escalate support for Ukraine by providing additional weapons, though Kyiv would be responsible for the cost. This signals a tough new phase in U.S. strategy against Russia.
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This policy would severely impact Hungary’s economy since it imports Russian crude oil through the Friendship pipeline across Ukraine. Hungary’s energy giant, MOL, profits substantially from processing cheap Russian crude, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue; money that significantly bolsters the Hungarian state budget since they must pay 95% of it as a windfall tax. Without this windfall, PM Orbán’s government may face considerable challenges in securing victory in the 2026 elections.
FM Szijjártó hopes Trump’s peace efforts will succeed
The Hungarian government hopes that US President Donald Trump’s peace efforts in Ukraine will succeed in the coming weeks, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Brussels on Tuesday. At a press conference during a break in an EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting, Szijjártó was asked to comment on Trump’s threat of imposing tariffs against Russia if no peace agreement is reached in Ukraine within 50 days.
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Szijjártó said no one had done more for peace in Ukraine than Trump, for which the president deserved respect and praise. “I think it is clear that if European politicians and Ukrainian politicians had not hindered the peace efforts, they could have been successful by now,” he said, according to a ministry statement.
“We hope and trust that Donald Trump’s efforts will succeed in the next fifty days, and bring about a ceasefire and the possibility of peace talks in Ukraine, and then this issue will no longer be relevant in fifty days,” he added. “We are all hopeful and thank Donald Trump for his efforts so far and hope that his efforts will bring results in the coming weeks,” he said.
Hungary highlights need for Brussels to represent EU trade interests in talks with US
Brussels needs to represent the European Union’s trade interests in negotiations with the United States on tariffs, Levente Magyar, a state secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said on public television on Tuesday. Magyar told news channel M1 that Brussels had to “read the Americans well” and advocate for the EU’s trade using “the right negotiating tactics”.
He said that it hadn’t happened, so far, in spite of the weighty consequences of the talks, pointing to the billions of dollars of Hungarian exports to the US each year. Magyar noted that the US had reached “workable” bilateral solutions with countries such as China and the UK, but said US President Donald Trump didn’t “take seriously” the leaders of the EU’s central institutions, preventing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from communicating within “the normal framework” expected between the world’s great powers.
He said that Trump was a “businessman who deals with foreign policy on a business-like basis”. So far, the EC has been “incapable” of achieving anything in negotiations with him, he added. Addressing political ties between Hungary and Germany, Magyar said bilateral economic ties were “outstanding” but political communication was “at a standstill”. Hungary aims to adjust political ties to those good economic ties and is weighing areas in which advances could be made, he added.
In that regard, the Merz government “appears willing”, he said. In an interview with public radio broadcast on Tuesday, Magyar said the EC needed to reach an agreement on planned US tariffs on imports in the coming two weeks. He added that trade worth hundreds of billions of euros was at stake. He warned that a 30pc or even higher tariff on EU imports would result in the loss of the American market. China can pay that, because of the efficiency of its production, but Europe can not, he added.