President Donald Trump has ordered that any nation which trades with Iran will be punished with a 25% additional tariff on “any and all business” done with the United States. That’s a lot of the world. As of 2022, the World Bank reported Iran had trade relations with 147 nations, according to Reuters. In 2023, it produced around four percent of the world’s oil (around 3.3-4 million bpd), and exported close to half (47%) of that production. It was ranked that year as the ninth-largest oil producer in the world, and the fourth-largest of the OPEC members.
China is Iran’s largest trading partner, and reportedly bought 80% of Iran’s oil exports in 2025, with payments made by non-dollar arrangements. It immediately strongly protested this new weaponization of tariffs.
China has a long-term view of its ties with Iran; the opening statement of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s “China and Iran” background page reports that “friendly exchanges between China and Iran date back to the 2nd century B.C. Gan Ying, an envoy dispatched by Ban Chao reached the territory of Iran (Arsacid dynasty), opening up a transportation route from China to ancient Rome via Iran. Since then, the peoples of China and Iran have maintained exchanges.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated bluntly on Jan. 14 that no third party can change the fundamental nature of the relationship between Russia and Iran, based as it is on agreements reached by the Presidents of the two countries. He cited their joint projects, such as the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, the International North-South Transport Corridor, and “numerous other items on the agenda of Russian-Iranian relations, which hold particular significance for the development of the entire region and the Eurasian continent.”
“When a powerful country like the United States resorts to such unscrupulous methods—methods of unfair competition—it only indicates that the competitive standing of the United States is steadily deteriorating,” he noted, warning that such methods will inevitably “lead to an even more severe crisis in international economic and political relations.”
