President Donald Trump promised that a wave of emergency tariffs on nearly every nation would restore “fair” trade and jump-start the economy.

Eight months later, half of U.S. imports are avoiding those tariffs.

“To all of the foreign presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, ambassadors, and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these tariffs,” Trump said in April when he rolled out global tariffs based on the United States’ trade deficits with other countries, “I say, terminate your own tariffs, drop your barriers, don’t manipulate your currencies.”

But in the time since the president gave that Rose Garden speech announcing the highest tariffs in a century, enormous holes have appeared. Carveouts for specific products, trade deals with major allies and conflicting import duties have let more than half of all imports escape his sweeping emergency tariffs.

Some $1.6 trillion in annual imports are subject to the tariffs, while at least $1.7 trillion are excluded, either because they are duty-free or subject to another tariff, according to a POLITICO analysis based on last year’s import data. The exemptions on thousands of goods could undercut Trump’s effort to protect American manufacturing, shrink the trade deficit and raise new revenue to fund his domestic agenda.

In September, the White House exempted hundreds of goods, including critical minerals and industrial materials, totaling nearly $280 billion worth of annual imports. Then in November, the administration exempted $252 billion worth of mostly agricultural imports like beef, coffee and bananas, some of which are not widely produced in the U.S. — just after cost-of-living issues became a major talking point out of Democratic electoral victories — on top of the hundreds of other carveouts.

“The administration, for most of this year, spent a lot of time saying tariffs are a way to offload taxes onto foreigners,” said Ed Gresser, a former assistant U.S. trade representative under Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term, who now works at the Progressive Policy Institute, a D.C.-based think tank. “I think that becomes very hard to continue arguing when you then say, ‘But we are going to get rid of tariffs on coffee and beef, and that will bring prices down.’ … It’s a big retreat in principle.”

The Trump administration has argued that higher tariffs would rebalance the United States’ trade deficits with many of its major trading partners, which Trump blames for the “hollowing out” of U.S. manufacturing in what he evoked as a “national emergency.” Before the Supreme Court, the administration is defending the president’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enact the tariffs, and Trump has said that a potential court-ordered end to the emergency tariffs would be “country-threatening.”

In an interview with POLITICO on Monday, Trump said he was open to adding even more exemptions to tariffs. He downplayed the existing carveouts as “very small” and “not a big deal,” and said he plans to pair them with tariff increases elsewhere.

Responding to POLITICO’s analysis, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “The Trump administration is implementing a nuanced and nimble tariff agenda to address our historic trade deficit and safeguard our national security. This agenda has already resulted in trillions in investments to make and hire in America along with over a dozen trade deals with some of America’s most important trade partners.”

To date, the majority of exemptions to the “reciprocal” tariffs — the minimum 10 percent levies on most countries — have been for reasons other than new trade deals, according to POLITICO’s analysis.

The White House also pushed back against the notion that November’s cuts were made in an effort to reduce food prices, saying that the exemptions were first outlined in the September order. The U.S. granted subsequent blanket exemptions, regardless of the status of countries’ trade negotiations with the Trump administration, after announcing several trade deals.

Following the exemptions on agricultural tariffs, Trump announced on Monday a $12 billion relief aid package for farmers hurt by tariffs and rising production costs. The money will come from an Agriculture Department fund, though the president said it was paid for by revenue from tariffs (by law, Congress would need to approve spending the money that tariffs bring in).

In addition to the exemptions from Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, more than $300 billion of imports are also exempted as part of trade deals the administration has negotiated in recent months, including with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and more recently, Malaysia, Cambodia and Brazil. The deal with Brazil removed a range of products from a cumulative tariff of 50 percent, making two-thirds of imports from the country free from emergency tariffs.

For Canadian and Mexican goods, Trump imposed tariffs under a separate emergency justification over fentanyl trafficking and undocumented migrants. But about half of imports from Mexico and nearly 40 percent of those from Canada will not face tariffs because of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term. Last year, importers claimed USMCA exemptions on $405 billion in goods; that value is expected to increase, given that the two countries are facing high tariffs for the first time in several years.

The Trump administration has also exempted several products — including autos, steel and aluminum — from the emergency reciprocal tariffs because they already face duties under Section 232 of the U.S. Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The imports covered by those tariffs could total up to $900 billion annually, some of which may also be exempt under USMCA. The White House is considering using the law to justify further tariffs on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and several other industries.

For now, the emergency tariffs remain in place as the Supreme Court weighs whether Trump exceeded his authority in imposing them. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that Trump’s use of emergency authority was unlawful — a decision the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld in August. During oral arguments on Nov. 5, several Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism that the emergency statute authorizes a president to levy tariffs, a power constitutionally assigned to Congress.

As the rates of tariffs and their subsequent exemptions are quickly added and amended, businesses are struggling to keep pace, said Sabine Altendorf, an economist with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

“When there’s uncertainty and rapid changes, it makes operations very difficult,” Altendorf said. “Especially for agricultural products where growing times and planting times are involved, it’s very important for market actors to be able to plan ahead.”

About the data

Trump’s trade policy is not a straightforward, one-size-fits-all approach, despite the blanket tariffs on most countries of the world. POLITICO used 2024 import data to estimate the value of goods subject to each tariff, accounting for the stacking rules outlined below.

Under Trump’s current system, some tariffs can “stack” — meaning a product can face more than one tariff if multiple trade actions apply to it. Section 232 tariffs cover automobiles, automobile parts, products made of steel and aluminum, copper and lumber — and are applied in that order of priority. Section 232 tariffs as a whole then take priority over other emergency tariffs. We applied this stacking priority order to all imports to ensure no double-counting.

To calculate the total exclusions, we did not count the value of products containing steel, aluminum and copper, since the tariff would apply only to the known portion of the import’s metal contentand not the total import value of all products containing them. This makes the $1.7 trillion in exclusions a minimum estimate.

Goods from Canada and Mexico imported under USMCA face no tariffs. Some of these products fall under a Section 232 category and may be charged applicable tariffs for the non-USMCA portion of the import. To claim exemptions under USMCA, importers must indicate the percentage of the product made or assembled in Canada or Mexico.

Because detailed commodity-level data on which imports qualify for USMCA is not available, POLITICO’s analysis estimated the amount that would be excluded from tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports by applying each country’s USMCA-exempt share to its non-Section 232 import value. For instance, 38 percent of Canada’s total imports qualified for USMCA. The non-Section 232 imports from Canada totaled around $320 billion, so we used only $121 billion towards our calculation of total goods excluded from Trump’s emergency tariffs.

Exemptions from trade deals included those with the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, Cambodia and Malaysia. They do not include “frameworks” for agreements announced by the administration. Exemptions were calculated in chronological order of when the deals were announced. Imports already exempted in previous orders were not counted again, even if they appeared on subsequent exemption lists.