On Thursday, Donald Trump announced punitive new reciprocal tariffs on imports from 185 countries around the world. Russia and its ally Belarus are conspicuously among the few countries that are exempt from the US president's list. Ukraine, however, is not.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that existing sanctions meant that there was no trade with Russia anyway. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the US and other countries, particularly those in Europe, ramped up already ongoing sanctions against Russia. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt underscored that the US sanctions in conjunction with the war in Ukraine would prevent "any meaningful trade" with Russia. But is this really true?

Strategic goods from Russia

According to the United States Census Bureau, trade with Russia has slumped dramatically since it began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine: from around $36 billion (€32.9 billion) in 2021 to around $3.5 billion (€3.2 billion) in 2024.

Bessent's claim that there is no trade with Russia therefore fails to reflect the reality that imports from the country, reduced as they may be, remain significant for the US, particularly because they involve strategic goods such as fertilizers and inorganic chemicals.

Even if trade with Russia is now one-tenth of previous levels, its omission from Trump's new tariffs cannot be explained by existing sanctions and the drop in import figures alone.

By comparison, Washington is imposing tariffs of 27% on imports from Kazakhstan, although the volume of trade with the US is equivalent to that of Russia: around $3.4 billion (€3.1 billion), of which $2.3 billion (€2.1 billion) is US imports. The volume of trade with Ukraine is even lower at $2.9 billion (€2.6 billion), of which $1.2 billion (€ 1.1 billion) is imports. Nevertheless, Ukraine is on Trump's list for a punitive tariff of 10%.

'Leniency of a symbolic nature'

Although a number of sanctioned countries, such as Venezuela, are also on Trump's tariff list, others subject to sanctions, including Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and Belarus, remain exempt from the new measures.

"This looks like leniency of a symbolic nature," political scientist and American studies expert Alexandra Filippenko told DW.

The US has not published any figures on trade with North Korea, Cuba and Belarus. But according to United Nations estimates, bilateral trade between the US and Belarus, for example, amounts to several tens of millions of dollars per year. In 2024, for example, Belarusian goods worth $21 million (€19.1 million) were imported into the US.

The tariff list, therefore, does not appear to be based exclusively on a country's trade volume. Even tiny or uninhabited territories such as the Heard and McDonald Islands — distant Australian territories in the southern Indian Ocean with practically no relevance to US trade — are affected by the measures.

Canada and Mexico are also missing from the new list, though most goods imported from both countries are already subject to existing tariffs of 25 percent.

Why is Russia exempt?

Political scientist Alexandra Filippenko sees Trump's decision to exclude Russia from the tariff list as a clear indication that improving relations with Moscow is a priority for him. "The Russian authorities have understood the political signal," she said, referring to a Telegram post by the Russian president's special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who is currently in Washington. In it, Dmitriev said that the restoration of dialogue between Russia and the US is a "difficult and gradual process" but that "each meeting, each frank conversation allows us to move forward."

Nina Khrushcheva, a professor of international affairs at the New School in New York, also sees diplomacy between the two countries as a possible reason for Trump to refrain from imposing tariffs on Russia. "I think political pressure will be exerted on Russia in one way or another, but during Dmitriev's visit, tariffs are rather counterproductive," she told DW. The Trump administration could impose tariffs on Russia later if it wanted to, Khrushcheva added.

Oleg Buklemishev, Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research at Moscow State University, on the other hand, considers Trump's decisions on Russia and Ukraine to be "devoid of any economic logic."

He also sees the decision not to impose additional tariffs on Russia as purely political, despite Washington's claims that bilateral trade is insignificant. Russian nuclear fuel, fertilizers and platinum metals all continue to be supplied to the US, and high tariffs on these could lead to greater energy costs, which are not in Trump's plans, Buklemishev said.

At the same time, he emphasized that the current trade volume with Russia, which has far diminished from its previous level, does not compare to the European or the Chinese market.

A return to more robust trade between Russia and the US would also be unrealistic, Buklemishev said. "Even if relations were to ease, it would be impossible to get back to the previous level. Financial, logistical and sanctions-related restrictions will remain in place, and China has already partially taken over the Russian market."

This article was originally written in German.