In the category of oldies but goodies is the long-forgotten non-aggression pact. The most famous was the one agreed to by Germany and the Soviet Union in August 1939. Now it has been revived in a peculiar way in the form of tariff agreements.

President Donald Trump imposed a 50% tariff on India simply because they purchased Russian oil.

Add to that Brazil, which insisted on placing its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, on trial for an attempted coup.

Trump, playing the role of a Republican Wilsonian, also hiked tariffs on a country with which the United States enjoys a trade surplus. These are coercive tactics that have a distinctly old-fashioned feel.

Take the German-Soviet pact of 1939. It too had a distinct economic component. Besides promising not to attack one another and carving up Poland, it also agreed to substantial cooperation regarding weapons and resources, mainly oil and grain.

The USSR received the armaments in the form of ships, while Germany received food and energy. It actually worked well for both nations, but Adolf Hitler decided that it was not enough. Afraid of becoming a junior partner to Joseph Stalin, he invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Economics had no role in it, but power did. Trump sees the world in a zero-sum fashion: your gain is our loss. This makes his impending negotiations with Vladimir Putin appear problematic. Given Trump’s mercurial style, it’s hard to say what will happen. Unlike Germany, the United States has no reason to want to gain either energy or food. Moreover, it constitutes a natural realm.

Of course, it could be handled differently. Trump could be only interested in stopping the bloodshed between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

However, the tariff situation suggests more, as did his negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which were a masterpiece of diplomatic poaching. Trump managed to tether Putin and Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in their immediate area of interest. Old-fashioned it was, and it worked.

Now, rather than speculate on Trump’s motivation, we will have to wait until after the Alaska visit. It remains to be seen whether the USA wants to play the role of the Roman Empire, but it does bear an eerie resemblance. Given that the European Union has prostrated itself to the USA for years, Trump may start appointing pro-consuls for each European state. Maybe he still calls it NATO.

Trump, however, is only playing a variation on an old theme. Whether he will squander the inheritance remains an area of speculation. But it is ambitious and risky.

The United States, since the Marshall Plan in 1948, has been able to enjoy subtle soft power with ease. Instead, Trump, with his obsession with an emerging “golden age,” may want to place a more obvious imperial stamp on his future transactions.