Comment by matt-p
16 days ago
10% is the hard minimum, nobody has less than 10%, so ergo 10% is actually the most favourable rate.
Even the UK gets 10% which is truly mad given we have balanced trade and tarrifs (if anything the US tariffed the UK more than they did them).
^So essentially MAX(10%,(imports-exports)/imports)
If you look at the full list (available e.g. here https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reciprocal-tariff-chart-20545...), some countries (most prominently Russia) are not on it. Whether that means anything is debatable, but Mexico and Canada, who were explicitly "spared" from these tariffs (but have other tariffs "tailor-made" especially for them), are also not on the list.
Is it possible the Newsweek list is wrong?
The EO and Annexes are not on the Federal Register website yet but on the Whitehouse website it has EO[1] and Annex I[2] and Annex II[3].
I do not see Russia or Ukraine mentioned in any of those so I would assume both get the base "10 percent" under section 2/3.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regu...
[2] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Annex-...
[3] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Annex-...
Russia is already subject to sanctions and high tariffs. What is the balance of trade like?
Also imposing high tariffs now would reduce the power of the threat to raise tarrifs: https://www.ft.com/content/ec99b3c2-9f4d-4f34-9a01-f97d98131...
> Russia is already subject to sanctions
So is Iran, and yet Iran is still on the list.
Well, the reasonable explanation would be that Russia is sanctioned and thus already has an infinity effective tariff.
But then, I have no idea if the reasonable explanation applies. Are the other countries not in the list Iran and Cuba?
Russia is a interesting catch, but you can easily imagine why now is an inoptune time to piss them off.
The others make sense since they have worse tarrifs (though different, yes)