Who Holds the Switch on Russian Urea?
A law signed in September ordered a 500 percent duty on everything the United States buys from Russia. The executive order implementing it, published Wednesday, raised the rate in section 2 and waived it in section 4. Fertilizer is 44 percent of that trade, 1.9 million tonnes of urea alone, and the waiver now sits with the Secretary of State.
Executive Order 14436 did two things to the same tariff schedule.
Section 2 increased the rate of duty on goods from the Russian Federation by 500 percent ad valorem. Section 4 waived it.
Both sections carry the same signature and the same date, October 16. Both reached the public record together on Wednesday, at 91 FR 66627, after sitting on the public inspection desk since Tuesday morning.
So the rate exists. Nothing collects it.
"If somebody lifts that waiver, which line on your entry summary actually pays?"
The reflex answer is oil, because section 112 of the underlying statute goes out of its way to list oil, natural gas, LNG, petroleum, petroleum products, petrochemical products, coal and coal products.
Mineral fuels, HS chapter 27, do not appear in the 2025 trade at all. Not one dollar. Organic chemicals came to $3.5 million, which is a rounding error on a truck.
What the Russia Book Still Holds
The United States imported $4.05 billion of goods from the Russian Federation in 2025.
Chapter 31, fertilizers, carried $1.80 billion of that. Chapter 28, inorganic chemicals, carried another $1.12 billion.
Two chemical chapters, 72.0 percent of the entire book.
Chapter 71 adds $733 million, effectively one line: unwrought palladium. Wood, machinery and everything else share what is left.
Eight HS lines account for most of it, and seven of the eight are something a chemical buyer recognizes (chart below).
A 500 percent duty on Russia is, in practice, a duty on 1,885,365 tonnes of urea, 1,258,988 tonnes of UAN solution, 1,136,857 tonnes of potassium chloride and 23.3 tonnes of palladium.
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