In the scores of countries hit by Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs announced Wednesday, one was mysteriously—but not surprisingly—absent: Russia.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios Wednesday that Moscow had been spared from Trump’s tariffs because U.S. sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade.”
Similarly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that it wasn’t necessary to place tariffs on Russia because after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, trade between the U.S. and Russia had effectively dried up.
But the claim that the U.S. doesn’t trade with Russia isn’t remotely true. In 2024, the U.S. imported $3 billion worth of goods from Russia, which was down from $4.6 billion the year before.
While this number may be small in comparison to key trading partners such as Canada, which imported a whopping $412.7 billion worth of American goods in 2024, it is still significantly more trade than with other countries that Trump levied steep tariffs against.
For example, Saint Pierre et Miquelon, a small French island territory off the coast of Canada, was hit with a whopping 50 percent tariff on imports to the U.S. The island, which has a population of roughly 5,000 people, imported only $100,000 worth of U.S. goods in 2024 and exported roughly $3.4 million worth of goods back.
If that’s not low enough, Trump even listed several uninhabited islands as receiving a 10 percent tariff on imports to the United States: Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, an Australian-territory that is listed as a Unesco World Heritage site for its “complete absence of alien plants and animals, as well as human impact.”
Clearly, a lack of trade was not an actual consideration in the Trump administration’s decision to levy tariffs, though Leavitt claimed that existing sanctions were also why Cuba, Belarus, and North Korea were not included on the list.
With Leavitt’s excuse falling flat, it seems increasingly likely that Trump has attempted to carve out a back door for Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue to do business with the U.S. as it makes an economic enemy out of every other country in the world.
Canada and Mexico were also absent from the list because Trump had already hit them with 25 percent tariffs on all U.S. imports, according to Leavitt.
The post Surprise, Surprise: Trump Left Key Country Off His Tariff List appeared first on New Republic.
