Of the 57 countries singled out for additional “reciprocal” tariffs in U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” executive order on April 2, Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian state to make the list.
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan will be subject to baseline 10 percent tariffs, which went into effect over the weekend, but Kazakhstan has been targeted with a 27 percent tariff set to go into effect on April 9.
First, a brief note on terms and shifting goalposts: While the administration refers to these tariffs as “reciprocal,” analysts quickly pointed out that isn’t accurate. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at markets insight firm RSM, told CNN: “It looked to me as if it was an ad hoc effort of punishing countries because they had large trade balances with the United States.”
After being questioned by journalists about how the figures were determined, the administration published a formula – complete with Greek letters – and dickered online about what it meant.
“The formula for the tariffs… does not make economic sense,” Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger wrote in an analysis for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank. “The trade deficit with a given country is not determined only by tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers, but also by international capital flows, supply chains, comparative advantage, geography, etc.”
According to the U.S. Trade Representative, total goods trade with Kazakhstan amounted to $3.4 billion in 2024 – $1.1 billion in U.S. exports to Kazakhstan and $2.3 billion in U.S. imports from Kazakhstan, for a trade deficit of $1.3 billion.
Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Trade and Integration said in an April 3 statement that trade turnover in 2024 amounted to $4.2 billion – with $2.2 billion in imports from the U.S. and nearly $2 billion in exports from Kazakhstan to the U.S.
These figures not only do not match up, but they suggest conflicting trade deficits. Both the U.S. and Kazakhstan cannot simultaneously be in a trade deficit with the other.
The Kazakh Trade Ministry’s statement did not note this discrepancy, but did point out that most of the categories of goods Kazakhstan exports to the U.S. are included in the list of exemptions. “The basis of Kazakhstan’s exports to the United States are crude oil, uranium, silver, ferroalloys and others,” the statement noted.
“The introduced tariff measures will affect only 4.8 percent of the total volume of Kazakhstan’s exports to the United States,” the statement said, pointing to phosphorus, wheat gluten, and ammonium nitrate, among other goods.
“The government is initiating consultations with the American side to discuss the possibility of not applying additional duties to Kazakhstan.”
Some Kazakh economists commenting online have downplayed the potential for the tariffs to harm Kazakhstan writ large. On Telegram, Rasul Rysmambetov wrote, “Kazakhstan has nothing to worry about: global conflicts are not our fire. Direct effects will not hit us.”
“Global conflicts are a chance to be a neutral intermediary, expand exports, strengthen trade ties with Asia, the EU and other countries,” he added.
(Rysmambetov cited different figures than either government source noted above: $2 billion in Kazakh exports to the U.S. and $1 billion in imports).
Economist Eldar Shamsutdinov told Tengrinews.kz, “The United States is not a key trading partner for Kazakhstan.”
Trade (whichever figures you cite) between the U.S. and Kazakhstan is limited and heavily skewed toward energy, which has been exempt from the new tariffs. Furthermore, areas for targeted growth on both the part of the U.S. and Kazakhstan – critical minerals – are also exempt. That suggests a limited impact in practice, but the messaging may leave a more lasting mark.