US Bill Calls on Trump to Exempt War-Torn Ukraine, Israel From Blanket Tariffs

US Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada, introduced fresh legislation on April 9 urging the Trump administration to exempt Ukraine and Israel from its sweeping tariffs.

The draft bill, shortly called Supporting American Allies Act, was obtained exclusively by Kyiv Post on Thursday. The author makes the case that the presidential Executive Order on import tariffs shall not apply to two of the US’s war-torn allies: Ukraine and Israel.

Donald Trump on Wednesday announced a 90-day pause to the sweeping tariffs he’d unleashed on all major US trading partners last week.

“The Trump Administration still has blanket 10 percent tariffs on both Ukraine and Israel, and that’s unacceptable” Senator Cortez Masto told the Kyiv Post Thursday afternoon. “These countries are under attack,” she said of Ukraine and Israel.

The Senator went on to add, “this should not be a partisan issue. It’s a national security issue and I urge the administration to do the right thing and protect our allies from these harmful tariffs”

Kyiv Post has contacted the White House and State Department for comment but hasn’t heard back by the time of publication.

Several Democrat legislators, including Congressmen Jim McGovern (D-MA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), as well as Senator Cortez Masto and others, earlier also expressed their concerns that President Trump’s original tariff plan was punishing America’s allies, such as Ukraine, while adversaries like Russia and North Korea were not impacted. And while Israel got slapped initially with a 17-percent tariff, even though US maintains a free-trade agreement with them, their adversary Iran got tariffed at a mere 10 percent.

Other Topics of Interest

Intent in Plain Sight: the Politics of a UN-Recognized Genocide

With the help of semantic sleight of hand, the UN seems to be underplaying what is clearly a genocide in Ukraine. Indicators point to a potential power struggle and political pressure within the highest levels of the UN to artificially reduce the gravity of genocide to “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity,” avoiding mentioning and examining “intent,” isolating the crimes, and switching provisions specific to children.

Senior Trump administration officials, including White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, had publicly brushed off some of those concerns, arguing that existing US sanctions on Russia “precluded any meaningful trade” and noting that Belarus and North Korea were also not included.