Even at the time, it looked like a particularly brazen example of a developing nation that traded heavily on its ties with the US, and had become the only declared “major non-NATO ally” of Washington on the African continent in 2024, largely as a result of its declared support for Ukraine.

Now, Kenya faces a review in the US Senate of whether it deserves to retain that position given its ties with Iran and China in particular.

And with Kenyan newspapers reporting an imminent trade deal with Beijing with zero apparent trade barriers, just as Trump imposes 10 percent tariffs on Kenya, Ruto has said there was now little choice which side to pick.

Trump’s administration sees its embrace of tariffs as key to its approach to the wider world, including matters of war and peace including Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan, as well as efforts to stem cross-border drug flows from Mexico and Canada.

For multiple nations in the so-called “Global South”, what Indian newspapers have called a “trade tsunami” has come as a dramatic shock to countries that have long been accustomed to walking an awkward path between various foreign power blocs.

It is a dynamic that reached a particular height this month, with Trump's administration unveiling its latest tariffs on every nation in the world, just as Trump threatened to impose further trade costs on Russia’s trading partners, particularly India and China, if there was no ceasefire in Ukraine soon.

The 10 percent US import tax imposed on Kenyan goods is in fact one of the lower rates. Brazil and India may grapple with tariffs up to 10 times that, with dozens of other nations facing levels somewhere in between and in multiple cases explicitly linked to specific political objectives.

As well as US envoy Steve Witkoff visiting Moscow, this month has seen Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer sitting down with Chinese counterparts for discussions that already appear to be moving beyond a potential trade deal to much wider US-China issues.

The knock-on effects of that are still being digested in Taiwan, where the US, in seeking to soothe relations with Beijing ahead of a potential meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping later in the year, appear to have snubbed Taiwanese leaders.

India’s foreign ministry described as "unjustified and unreasonable" comments from Trump describing Indian oil purchases as “fueling the Russian war machine" in Ukraine.

Some Indian newspapers were considerably more blunt, describing the US position as hypocrisy.

The reality is a touch more complicated, although it is true that neither the US nor European nations have gone as far as they might have in seizing Russian assets or blocking Russian trade themselves, a point repeatedly made by Ukraine itself.

On multiple occasions, Trump has described trade tariffs as one of his preferred tactics to end armed conflict and minimize further bloodshed.

And when it comes to both ending fighting in Ukraine as well as years of unrest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa, he has also explicitly pursued linked mineral deals critics say may benefit the US before the host nations.

For countries that need to shape their own long-term policies to the US and other major powers, however, the second-order effects of these developments can be hard to approach clearly. And matters get even worse when they are wrapped in the president’s own more personal ambitions.

Much of this tariff-related turmoil, so far at least, has been to the benefit of both Moscow and Beijing, creating ready divisions and frustration for them to exploit with trade deals and sometimes propaganda.

Whether that can remain the case for the remainder of the year, though, is a very different question, particularly as both are now the focus of what the US sees as arguably its most important negotiations, balancing trade and geopolitics.

In the short term, Trump's tariff blitz might well move those nations all closer to one another, helping cement the sort of Russian-Chinese leadership of the BRICS group of emerging economies that both Moscow and Beijing have long hoped they might achieve.

Without a doubt, China has made it clear it does not want to see the Kremlin lose badly in Ukraine. Particularly likely, Beijing fears an outcome in which President Vladimir Putin’s rule collapses, at worst raising speculation of a similar fate for Xi. But the more this is tied to wider trade and other issues with the US and beyond, the more complex that calculus is.

Even more importantly, Beijing must also make its own decision on what deal it wants to strike, if any, and again, how that affects its other strategic priorities, particularly Taiwan.

If an agreement can be reached, the Trump administration is giving the impression that it might pull back on support to the Taipei government, perhaps including weapons sales.

Simultaneously, both Moscow and Beijing will be looking at the US Pentagon’s strategic posture review, due to be published in the autumn, for direction on worldwide US military deployments. Both will be hoping Washington pulls back forces in the vicinity of their borders, but the rougher relations are when that report is published, the less likely that might be.

And all of that, of course, means the second and third order effects rolling down to other nations become even less predictable. That is unsettling enough even for major US allies, with the European Union, Britain, Japan, South Korea and other major partners moving fast this summer to seal their own deals with Trump before the strategic chessboard moves again.

By the end of the year, more clarity is possible.

Either Trump will have met with Xi as a start to ongoing dialogue, or relations with Beijing will have fractured further. Similarly with Moscow, things might well be either notably more hostile or considerably more friendly.

That would at least give the rest of the world something more solid to work with. In the meantime, expect nations caught in the middle to either try to keep their options open, or to make a virtue of jumping early to one side or the other.

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The writer is a columnist for Reuters. The views expressed are personal.