The United States put a new 12.5% tariff on Russian goods on 24 July, and it was not aimed at Russia. Moscow was swept in as one of 60 countries under a single trade order, taxed at the same rate as Norway or Australia, and higher than the allies who had moved against forced labor, the abuse the tariff targets.

The tariff that looks like pressure on Russia is a formality—the same rate a NATO neighbor pays, on trade already hollowed out by the war.

Countries that ban imports made with forced labor—or pledged to bring in such a ban—paid a lower 10%: Canada, India, Mexico, and the United Kingdom among them. Everyone else paid the full rate. Russia was in that group—one of some 40 economies from Norway to Saudi Arabia—charged the standard rate for any country that had done nothing on forced labor, a Federal Register notice shows.

Why not the war

There is a reason the label is forced labor and not the war. Trump’s tariffs keep collapsing—the Supreme Court threw out his first attempt early this year as an abuse of emergency powers, and the temporary fix he reached for next ran out the same day.

A trade law built around forced labor gives them a sturdier footing that courts are likelier to uphold, a congressional analysis explains. Russia was just one of dozens named in the replacement.

For Russia, the sting is close to nothing. Years of sanctions have already cut what the United States buys from Russia to about $3.8 billion a year, according to US trade office figures—a rounding error beside the oil and gas money that funds the war.

For comparison, in 2025 the United States imported about $600 billion in goods from the European Union. A tariff on the scraps changes nothing in Moscow’s budget.

The measure that would truly bite Moscow is different, and it is stuck. The measure that would truly bite Moscow is different, and it is stuck. A bill championed by the late Senator Lindsey Graham would let Washington put tariffs of up to 100% on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas—China and India—aiming at the revenue that keeps the war going.

Graham died on 11 July, a day after a visit to Kyiv. The bill now carries his name.

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US Sen. Graham’s Russia sanctions bill sat stalled for over a year—now the Senate has the votes to pass it

Already watered down from an earlier 500%, it still faces hurdles in the Senate and has yet to reach a vote.

So the tariff that looks like pressure on Russia is a formality—the same rate a NATO neighbor pays, on trade already hollowed out by the war. The one built to hurt Moscow is not law yet.