President Joe Biden on Friday said that the U.S. is working with other Group of Seven (G7) nations and the European Union, to rescind Russia’s “most favoured nation” status over its invasion of Ukraine.

Making this disclosure in a series of tweets on Friday Mr Biden explained that the step will make it more difficult for “Russia to do business with the U.S.”

“First, each of our nations will take steps to deny Russia’s Most-Favored Nation status. It will make it harder for Russia to do business with the U.S. And doing it in unison with nations that together make up half of the global economy, will be another crushing blow to Russia,” the tweet by the U.S. president read.

Mr Biden also disclosed that the U.S. is taking further steps to ban the import of goods from several signature sectors of Russia’s economy including seafood, vodka, and diamonds.

The G7 is also moving to prevent Russia from borrowing from major multilateral institutions.

The principle of most favoured nation treatment maintains that unless a preferential agreement is in place, all WTO members must pay the same rate of duty on identical items.

The revocation of Russia’s favoured nation status paves the way for the U.S. and its allies to impose tariffs on a wide range of Russian imports, heaping far more pressure on Russia’s economy that has recently been hit by several sanctions occasioned by its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia will now operate under the WTO’s General Tariff, which means that a 35 per cent tariff will be applied to virtually all of its exports.

Earlier the G7 in a joint statement said a “broad coalition” of WTO members were preparing to revoke important benefits of Russia’s MFN membership.

The G7 is also stepping up pressure on corrupt Russian billionaires to target and capture their ill-gotten gains.

The G7 is made up of the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.