Donald Trump’s Treasury pick says the United States should increase sanctions on Russian oil.

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Scott Besant has criticized the Biden administration for not being tough on Vladimir Putin’s regime, saying the US should increase sanctions on Russian oil producers to force Moscow to negotiate with Ukraine.

Donald Trump’s nomination for Treasury secretary rose on Thursday. Fuel pricesas traders anticipate tighter global crude supplies. The new administration is expected to target Iranian and Venezuelan oil with tougher sanctions as Trump seeks to increase economic pressure on US opponents.

“As part of (Trump’s) strategy to end the war in Ukraine, I would be 100 percent for steps that would bring the Russian Federation to the table to take sanctions against Russian oil companies in particular.” given He told the senators.

He says US sanctions on Russian energy are “not enough” because “the previous administration was worried about raising prices during the election season.”

Brent, the international oil benchmark, rose more than a dollar after Besant’s comments reached above $81 a barrel.

His comments came four days ago during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill. Trump He returns to the White House with plans to implement sweeping tax cuts, higher tariffs and aggressive regulations in a major shift from the outgoing Biden administration.

In the year U.S. equities have surged since Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, while Wall Street embraced his agenda, with the bosses of the world’s biggest banks reporting record profits this week — saying optimism over the new administration’s economic plans had unleashed “animal spirits.”

But big bank executives this week warned that Trump’s threat to impose higher tariffs could be inflationary.

The billionaire hedge fund boss has used the Senate Finance Committee — which must approve the nominee — to defend those plans.

Although he did not provide new details, Trump said he would use tariffs to address unfair trade practices, raise revenue for the U.S. government and compromise deals with other countries.

Bessant said Trump would push China to buy more U.S. agricultural products under a deal he struck with Beijing to ease trade tensions during the Republican-led administration’s first term. Trump said he would continue to apply export controls to US goods going to China.

“With AI, quantum computing and surveillance, we have to have a very strict screening process for anything that can be used in chips,” he said.

Besant said his support for extending Trump’s tax cuts through the end of the year is “the most important economic issue of the moment.”

In the year Failure to extend the cuts to individuals and businesses introduced by Trump in 2017 would be an “economic disaster” for the US and would “fall, as always, on middle and working class people with financial uncertainty.” A fierce political battle over tax policy is expected to dominate Congress this year.

On the economic outlook, Besant said he believes inflation will continue to move toward the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, and that the Trump administration will respect the central bank’s independence over monetary policy.

But the US Treasury has warned that it will struggle to use its “borrowing capacity” in times of crisis as America’s fiscal health deteriorates.

“I’m concerned because so many times the United States Treasury has been called upon to save the country, whether it’s the Civil War, the Great Depression, World War II or the recent Covid pandemic,” Besant said.

He added, “We will have a hard time doing the same thing as we have now.”