The Russia Tariff Canard: Was Russia Really "Spared"?

American Thinker ^ | 04/08/2025 | Charlton Allen

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Cheap political attacks have been part of American life since before the ink dried on the Constitution. Even George Washington took fire from scornful scribes accusing him—the man who freed us from the shackles of the British crown—of monarchist leanings.

But the latest hit job on Donald Trump’s tariff policy—accusing him of “sparing” Russia while targeting Ukraine—stands out for its sheer dishonesty. It’s not just lazy. It’s willfully misleading.

The claim—explicit or implied—echoed across the New York Times, Axios, BBC, and the global peanut gallery—that Trump “spared” Russia while targeting Ukraine is more than misleading. It’s a lazy distortion at best—built to deflect attention from what’s actually happening: a long-overdue reset of U.S. trade policy that, for once, puts America’s interests first.

Let’s be clear: Russia has not been “spared.” It’s already under a battery of sanctions and trade restrictions that make any discussion of tariffs functionally moot. Under Trump and Biden, U.S. policy has effectively walled off Russian goods—sanctioning everything from energy and banking to luxury items.

There’s no point in slapping tariffs on goods that can’t legally enter the country in the first place. Trump’s critics pretend not to understand that tariffs aren’t symbolic gestures—they’re economic instruments. You don’t use a wrench to saw a plank.

Ukraine, by contrast, gets preferential access to U.S. markets under special tariff regimes. Trump’s plan to realign that access isn’t about punishment but leverage. The Trump Doctrine doesn’t sort the world into saints and sinners, as the Beltway crowd likes to imagine. It treats every relationship—friend or foe—the same way: with a simple test of reciprocity, sovereignty, and strength calibrated by what serves American interests.

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And here’s where the critics give up the game: the same media and political class now rending their duty-free Armani suits in performative agony over Trump’s tariffs on Ukraine were silent—or worse, supportive—when the Biden administration waived sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in 2021.

[yldstrk]

US isn’t buying anything from Ruskies. Hello.