According to the United Nations, there are 195 recognized countries in the world and President Trump’s tariffs apply to most of them.
President Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on goods coming in from 180 different countries. Only a handful of countries were exempt from the tariff package, notably among them: Russia.
Other entities escaping the tariff wrath include North Korea and Belarus, two widely panned authoritarian regimes.
The White House attempted to explain Russia’s exemption from the list.
U.S. sanctions on Moscow already “preclude any meaningful trade”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.
Cuba was also not on the list of tariffed nations.
Canada and Mexico were not on the list, not because they are escaping tariffs but because they are covered under different trade agreements. Other countries not being hit with tariffs include smaller ones like Burina Faso, Palau, Seychelles, Somalia, and Vatican City.
“This is one of the most important days in American history, it’s our declaration of economic independence,” Trump said Wednesday. “Jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country, and you see it happening already.”
Still, economists of all ideologies were generally skeptical.
With today’s announcement, U.S. tariffs will approach levels not seen since the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930, which incited a global trade war and deepened the Great Depression,” conservative Cato Institute trade specialists Scott Lincicome and Colin Grabow, said in a joint statement on Wednesday.