The US tariffs on Kazakhstan look peculiar, but the overall impact of the US trade policy won’t be unnoticed

KAZAKHSTAN - In Brief 03 Apr 2025 by Evgeny Gavrilenkov

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As the US administration published the list of countries and tariffs imposed on many countries, Kazakhstan found itself in a quite peculiar situation as its foreign trade with the US so far was insignificant. According to the Kazakh Bureau of National Statistics, exports to the US accounted for about 2.4% of the country’s total exports in 2024, while the share of imports from the US looked somewhat higher (3.8% of total 2024 imports). According to the Bureau, exports to the US in nominal terms were below $2.0 bln, while imports from the US slightly exceeded $2.2 bln last year. Hence, the US had a positive trade balance with Kazakhstan. Still, the latter was charged with 27% tariffs, which appeared higher than in many other countries. One can only hope that tariffs on Kazakhstan can help the US to improve its balance of payments meaningfully. However, the direct impact of these tariffs on the Kazakh economy won’t be essential given the insignificant volume of exports to the US. Still, Kazakhstan may experience other effects if the oil prices fall further and stay lower for some time. So far, a combination of the US foreign trade policy and OPEC’s recent decision to increase production caused the oil price to fall today by over 7% at the time of writing this note (i.e., below $70/bbl). If the current global trade disputes continue for some time, the global economy could remain in an uncertain environment. In this case, oil prices could stay well below the level set in the Kazakh budget this year. If so, the Kazakh authorities may again face the same challenges we broached previously, such as a lack of budget revenues linked to the oil prices and an excessively strong ten...