Russia slaps additional import duties on US industrial goods and warns that more may come
The extra duties of 25 to 40 per cent will apply to imports of fibre optics and equipment for road construction, the oil and gas industries and metal processing and mining
Russia said on Friday it was imposing additional import duties on some US industrial goods after the United States applied tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, warning that more retaliatory steps could be in the pipeline.
The economy ministry said that Russia would impose extra tariffs on some goods from the United States for which there are Russian-made substitutes.
The extra duties of 25 to 40 per cent will apply to imports of fibre optics and equipment for road construction, the oil and gas industries and metal processing and mining.
The ministry said the measures, signed by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, were intended to compensate for estimated US$87.6 million of damage suffered by Russian export-focused companies as a result of the US metals tariffs.
The Russian move comes amid what China has called the “largest-scale trade war” that saw the United States and China slapping tit-for-tat duties on US$34 billion worth of each other’s imports on Friday.
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Import duties on US road-building machinery could help the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who controls GAZ, Russia’s biggest maker of road-building equipment, and was hit by US sanctions.
Deripaska has already asked the Russian state to purchase some output from his aluminium company Rusal in an effort to alleviate the pain inflicted by US sanctions.
