When the US President Donald Trump announced his punitive tariffs on Wednesday, almost the entire world was affected.
The long list included everything from the EU to Ukraine to China – to remote small islands like Tokelau and Svalbard, writes Axios.
But Russia was conspicuously absent.
According to the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, Russia was excluded because the US sanctions against the country already "prevent all significant trade". However, the US trades more with Moscow than with countries such as Mauritius and Brunei, which are on the list, notes Axios.
Russia has asked the US to lift some of the sanctions against the country as part of the US-mediated negotiations on a ceasefire in the Ukraine war. So far, it has not yielded results. Last week, Trump instead threatened Russia with additional tariffs on oil, reportedly after being angered by the Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments on Ukraine.
Cuba, Belarus, and North Korea are also missing from Trump's tariff list. According to Leavitt, this is because existing sanctions and tariffs against these countries are already so high.
The US's neighboring countries, Canada and Mexico, were not on the list presented yesterday, as the US has already introduced 25 percent tariffs against them.
