US media quotes the White House press secretary as saying this is because of sanctions on Moscow.
Summary
Russia was excluded from Trump’s sweeping tariff list due to existing U.S. sanctions that limit trade, White House officials claimed.
Despite lower trade volumes, countries like Syria were still included, prompting skepticism.
Trump has prioritized ending the war in Ukraine and threatened 50% tariffs on nations buying Russian oil. Russian state media framed the omission as sanctions-based, not favoritism, with some mocking Trump’s harsher stance on allies.
Ukraine, meanwhile, faces a 10% tariff despite the country’s strategic partnership with the U.S.
However, nations with even less trade with the US - such as Syria, which exported $11m of products last year according to UN data quoted by Trading Economics - were on the list.
According to the Office of the US Trade Representative, the US imported goods from Russia worth $3.5bn (£2.7bn) in 2024. It mainly consisted of fertilisers, nuclear fuel and some metals, according to Trading Economics and Russian media.
There's a possibility that someone used an LLM to formulate the tariff percentages. That's not baseless, there's evidence based on replication and similar language in the USTR site.
Which makes it a funny joke to suggest that they did the entire tariff plan top to bottom in ChatGPT.
And so were uninhabited islands. I'm not saying these people are geniuses. I'm saying that Grok probably said to skip sanctioned countries and they got that mostly right.