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Comment by thiht

7 days ago

Funny how Russia is absent from the list

They’re sanctioned up the wazoo

> U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024.

Among European Union members:

> The total bilateral trade in goods reached €851 billion in 2023.

  • That makes no difference to who should get tariffs by the administration's own logic. They're cozying up to Russia. No other explanation is feasible.

    • I can think of at least a dozen reasons but I'll give you one: We are in delicate peace negotiations with Russia _right_ now. There is good reason to isolate all foreign policy decisions with that country to those negotiations. It is called doing more than one thing at a time.

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  • Europe buys oil and gas from Russia. But EU has set maximum prices what screws russia.

  • Considering Russia has been disobeying orders and Australia and Japan have done almost nothing to the USA, then why not give it to them a bit harder?

Current US sanctions on Russia make trade a moot point, that’s why.

  • Total trade with Russia in 2024: $3.5bn

    Total trade with Ukraine in 2024: $2.9bn

    https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia...

    So, Ukraine will get an exemption, too, right? Because their trade is even a mooter point, right? Right?!

    • This is down from $23B in 2019, and is basically just fertilizer and minerals used to make fertilizer.

      Fertilizer is not sanctioned due to the fact it’s needed for food security in the EU (surprise suprise, the EU is not just insecure domestically in terms of military and energy and technology, but also in terms of fertilizers needed to grow food, fantastic governance they have over there…leaving potash mining or nat gas extraction to other countries does look good for those domestic net zero calculations though!).

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  • They tariffed uninhabited land, countries that export nothing to the US, and countries for which the US has a trade surplus.

    All those circumstances also would have made the point moot... yet they all still made the list.

  • There is still more trade with Russia than many countries in the list. Even Syria and Iran got tariffs.

  • The administration placed tariffs on uninhabited islands. I don't think they gave a rat's patootie about the volume of trade.

Besides the sanctions, the G7+EU hold something around 300 billion $ of funds so far owned by the Ruzzian central bank. Not enough to rebuild Ukraine, but it will be a decent start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confiscation_of_Russian_centra...

  • Stealing the assets of countries like Venezuela and Russia caused this to happen by making the rest of the world move off of the dollar to secure their asses. Doing more of them is the dumbest idea that can be proposed.