President Donald Trump’s new list of tariffs has an even longer list of exemptions — including some of the targeted countries’ biggest exports to the United States.
Trump implemented a new set of tariffs of between 10 and 12.5 percent on 60 trading partners, citing a failure to prevent forced labor in their supply chains. The accompanying set of carve-outs, however, shields at least half of U.S. imports from those countries, according to a POLITICO review of trade levels from 2025. Some countries on the list received exemptions for nearly everything they imported to the U.S. last year.
Out of the roughly $3.4 trillion in goods imported last year from these 60 trading partners, which includes the European Union and other U.S. allies, goods worth more than $1.7 trillion worth will not face the new duties under the exemptions in Trump’s executive order. Up to $281 billion more may be exempt under special provisions, including for civil aircraft, pharmaceutical products and some textile imports from the Dominican Republic and Central America.
Most prominently, the largest imports from the United States’ biggest trading partners are on the exemption list — including smartphones from China, crude oil from Canada, computer processing equipment from Mexico and medical materials from the EU.
