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2/ First, what are sanctions? Sanctions are rules that make it illegal for my citizens to conduct certain forms of business with whomever the sanctions target. Who they apply to (targets), and what kind of business they cover (scope), can be vary in breadth.

3/ For example in terms of targets the EU sanctions individuals, entities (companies or organizations) and entire regimes. And in terms of scope they might ban travel, freeze assets, restrict sales of certain goods or ban all financial interactions.

4/ Sanctions tend to have a range of objectives: a) Symbolically signalling outrage and punitive intent; b) Denying a state weapons or the inputs it needs to make weapons; c) Applying economic pressure toward policy changes or regime change

He floated "secondary tariffs" not sanctions, though as usual, he probably didn't know what he was saying.

Talk about this down in the 17th post (sorry lol). Secondary sanctions when applied at a regime level are basically secondary tariffs unless you're going to get really insane with them.

I think the hope/expectation is that the sanctions have been explained/sold to him as a kind of "tariff".

Occam's razor suggests he didn't know what he was talking about is more likely. He's the tariff man, one trick pony.