Donald Trump has been planning to get his hands on some of the $370 billion of Russian funds frozen within Europe while also taking a multibillion-dollar slice of Nvidia’s potential revenue from sales of its more advanced chips to China. Neither ambition is tracking exactly as planned.

In the bilateral peace negotiations the US has been having with Russia, a key element for gaining American support for a plan that favours Russia’s interests over Ukraine’s is the establishment of two US-led joint venture investment vehicles with Russia, funded by most of the €210 billion ($370 billion) of Russian foreign exchange reserves held within Europe.

Donald Trump loves to turn international negotiations into transactions.Credit: AP

Earlier this month, Trump, after heavy lobbying by Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, said he would allow the company to sell its H200 chips – a generation behind its most advanced Blackwell chips – to China in exchange for a 25 per cent cut of the revenue from the sales.

On Friday, the European Union, which has been dithering and divided for two years over what to do with the Russian assets, most of which are held by the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear, invoked emergency powers to pass legislation that freezes those assets indefinitely.

Previously, approval for the freeze had to be renewed every six months, which provided a half-yearly opportunity for pro-Russian countries – Viktor Orbán’s Hungary being the most obvious – to veto the renewal and any attempt to use the funds to provide aid to Ukraine.

The use of the emergency powers means a majority of the EU members can now extend the freeze, which will be reviewed annually.

While that would make it easier for the EU to use the frozen funds as collateral for a “reparations” loan to Ukraine, it also gives Europe a seat at the negotiating table for a peace deal using the fate of those funds as leverage.

The US and Russia now can’t dispose of those assets – Russia can’t use them to help buy Trump’s support for a deal on........

© The Sydney Morning Herald