00:00Trump's tariff war with Canada has produced sharp increases in the cost of fertiliser.
00:04So money is obviously, as with a lot of things with Trump, money is the big driver of this.
00:09But there is one reading about the Ukraine thing that is maybe a little bit more positive
00:12for, you know, global peace and our stance in the UK.
00:17There is a thought, and it's been articulated by senior Trump officials in 2026, that the
00:24strategic ambition is to prize Lukashenko loose from Moscow, to basically introduce enough
00:30daylight into the Belarus-Russia relationship to complicate any Russian military planning
00:36for any future Ukraine escalation.
00:39Obviously, we've talked about on this podcast before the use of Belarusian territory by Russia
00:45for incursions into NATO states.
00:48And there is a hope in the Trump amongst Trump officials, or at least this is the line that
00:53they're peddling, that Washington could convert Lukashenko into a bit more of a neutral actor,
00:58which would have strategic value to Ukraine and to NATO more broadly.
