Russia, Cuba and North Korea escape worst of Trump’s tariff wrath

Moscow — While US President Donald Trump announced tariffs on allies and foes including Europe, India, Japan and China, some of the world’s most heavily sanctioned countries — Russia, Belarus, Cuba and North Korea — avoided being singled out for special punitive treatment.

With the world gripped by trade war, Trump imposed a 10% tariff on most goods imported to the US. China, the biggest supplier of goods to the US, now faces a 54% tariff on all exports to the world’s biggest consumer.

“In the face of unrelenting economic warfare, the US can no longer continue with a policy of unilateral economic surrender,” Trump said as he presented the tariffs.

The White House released a list of comments from people praising his tariffs. They said ordinary American workers would benefit after years of what they described as abuse from trading partners such as China.

Trump said he would impose a 10% baseline tariff on all imports to the US and higher duties on dozens of countries. Russia, Cuba and North Korea did not appear on the list of countries facing higher reciprocal tariffs released by the White House.

US intelligence agencies said in their annual threat assessment that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea were the biggest potential nation-state threats to the US, and Trump had threatened Moscow with new trade measures.

Asked why Russia was not on the list, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that the US did not trade with Russia and Belarus and that they were under sanctions.

Goods trade between Russia and the US was $3.5bn last year, according to US figures. In 2021, the year before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was $36bn.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios that Russia was left off because there was no meaningful trade with it, and Cuba, Belarus and North Korea were not included because existing tariffs and sanctions on them were already so high.

Russia, which is under more than 28,595 different Western sanctions, has classified trade data since the start of the war.

US goods imports from Russia totalled $3bn in 2024, down 34.2% from 2023, according to the office of the US trade representative.

For Russia, though, the biggest risk is a potential slowdown in global demand as a result of the wider tariff war, which could hit the price of oil. The Russian central bank warned officials earlier this year that the US and Opec have the capacity to flood the oil market and cause a repeat of the prolonged price collapse of the 1980s, which contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union.

On Sunday, Trump told NBC News that he was very angry after Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised the credibility of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and the US president suggested he could impose secondary tariffs of 25%-50% on buyers of Russian oil.

Reuters