Does anyone have a link to how Trump determined how much another country was charging us for tariffs?

[Baitball Blogger]

I heard that a country in Europe figured it out and it was nonsensically based on something that had nothing to do with tariffs.

[Scrivener7]

1. In many cases it looks like he mistook trade deficits for tariffs.

[rzemanfl]

2. He reached down and pulled the numbers out of his fat ass. n/t

[nature-lover]

3. Try this post from yesterday.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20200887

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. They are all done by a simple bogus formula: goods deficit divided by total goods trade

Then divide in half to get the bogus "discounted" tariff rate.

If the numerator (goods deficit) is negative, as in the case of UK, just assign 10%. Penalize them anyway.
If the denominator is zero (no goods traded), who cares, just assign 10% and put them on the chart.

This has no basis in the work of any economist. It is nonsense.

The tRump people are so stupid and incompetent that they think that if they equalize (hah!) things by imposing tariffs, then the trade will automatically go into balance. Because as tRump and Lutnick and Navarro said yesterday and today: this is not for negotiation. These are the tariffs.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. No, but here's a source for the real figures.

https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides

[underpants]

6. They divided trade imbalances by the total imports from the same country

Totally convoluted. I’d never walk into a meeting with anything like these numbers. Completely unsupportable. BS.

My post 3 has the has two sources including an AI. The link is to another reporter “sharpening up their pencil” as an old salesman I knew used to say.

I likes math.


https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=20203053

[Ping Tung]

7. Of couse. He had an advisor.

[marble falls]

8. Sure do, gotcher Ouija board at the ready?

[Captain Zero]

9. Maybe the numbers came from Penske File?

George Costanza has been working on them.

[Tadpole Raisin]

10. I was going for the magic 8 ball but that will do....

[milestogo]

11. He looked at his own poop and saw numbers.

[DoBW]

12. it's snake oil ...

looks fancy + legit, but pros say it's made up crap

https://bsky.app/profile/tradediversion.bsky.social/post/3lluhex5qwc2w

[Ms. Toad]

13. Chat GPT.

https://gizmodo.com/did-trump-use-chatgpt-to-determine-disastrous-new-tariffs-2000584894

[struggle4progress]

14. What's the Math Behind Trump's New Tariffs?

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-stock-market-04-03-2025/card/math-behind-new-tariffs-points-to-trade-imbalance-as-key-issue-W4I7vbzaO5qFZS43hAjc

[LetMyPeopleVote]

15. Here are some examples of how the tariffs are calculated including Vietnam which is being hammered by this formula

This is a very stupid way to calculate tariffs

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Here is the Vietnam example

Link to tweet

This guy cracked the tariff formula:
@orthonormalist

It’s simply the nation’s trade deficit with us divided by the nation’s exports to us.

Yes. Really.

Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1
Deficit = 123.5

123.5/136.6 = 90%

[LetMyPeopleVote]

16. Trump's Tariff Formula Slammed As 'Fake' And 'Incredibly Stupid' By Experts

trump is an idiot and is very bad at math. trump does not understand trade deficits and balance of trade numbers which is why trump keeps claiming that the US is subsidizing Canada. The math behind the trump tariffs is incredibly stupid and simplistic. Again trump is using a stupid formula because he is too stupid to understand the math
https://bsky.app/profile/forbes.com/post/3llweasa4at22

Link to tweet

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/04/03/trumps-tariff-formula-slammed-as-fake-and-incredibly-stupid-by-experts

The tariff rates unveiled by President Donald Trump on Wednesday stems from a simple formula based on U.S. trade imbalances with other countries—not the tariff rates they charge the U.S., along with “currency manipulation and trade barriers,” as the White House initially claimed.

Key Facts

Trump, debuting rates including 54% for China, 20% for the European Union and 26% for India, said the figures were based on “the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating” that was then divided in half because Trump wanted to be “kind.”

Analyses posted on social media and in news articles determined the numbers were based on a much more simplistic calculation made by dividing a country’s trade surplus (representing the value by which a country’s exports exceeds the cost of its imports from the U.S.) by its total export value, then multiplying the figure by 0.5.

The formula matched the tariffs Trump debuted for China, the European Union, Indonesia, India and Vietnam, Ian Bremmer, a global political scientist and founder of Eurasia Group consultancy firm, pointed out on X, writing “this is…incredibly stupid.”

China, for example, had a trade surplus of $295 billion with the U.S. last year, with $438 billion worth of goods exported to the U.S.—$295 billion divided by $438 billion is equal to 67%, and divided in half equals the 34% tariff rate Trump debuted Wednesday.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative later confirmed the formula by publishing what appears to be a complex math equation for calculating the tariff rates, but when stripped of its Greek letters, shows it’s essentially based on countries’ trade surpluses with the U.S. divided by their export value then divided in half.

The approach suggests countries could lower their tariffs by buying more U.S. products, which would be “very difficult for Asian, particularly poorer Asian countries, to meet US demand . . . given that U.S. goods are much more expensive, and the purchasing power is lower for countries targeted with the highest levels of tariffs,” Natixis senior economist Trinh Nguyen told CNBC.

Chief Critics
“If the Trump administration didn't calculate the "tariff rates" other countries are supposedly imposing on us by using the formula trade deficit/imports, it's an amazing coincidence that every single country's "tariff rate" is equal to trade deficit/imports,” economic journalist James Surowiecki wrote on X. Thomas Sampson of the London School of Economics told the BBC "the formula is reverse engineered to rationalise charging tariffs on countries with which the US has a trade deficit. There is no economic rationale for doing this and it will cost the global economy dearly."

Again, the formula used by trump is very stupid

[LetMyPeopleVote]

17. The formula for Trump's tariffs is stupid

Link to tweet

[LetMyPeopleVote]

18. The Trump White House keeps trying (and failing) to make mathematical formulas work

During the pandemic, Team Trump tried to craft a formula that told them what they wanted to hear. With tariffs, they did it again. Both were failures.
https://bsky.app/profile/hategop.bsky.social/post/3llzbsvwzps2b

The Trump White House keeps trying (and failing) to make mathematical formulas work.
During the pandemic, Team Trump tried to craft a formula that told them what they wanted to hear. With tariffs, they did it again. Both were failures.

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-white-house-keeps-trying-make-mathematical-formulas-work-rcna199733

Roughly five years later, the Republican president is back in the Oval Office; he and his team are again mismanaging a crisis; and the whole operation is again trying and failing to concoct mathematical formulas. As my MSNBC colleague Hayes Brown summarized:

When President Donald Trump presented his sweeping global tariffs from the Rose Garden on Wednesday, even the most basic questions were left up in the air. At the top of the list: How did the White House derive the wildly disparate rates listed on the graphic Trump so proudly displayed? As global markets roiled in the aftermath of the announcement, the White House gave an answer about its calculations that was patently ridiculous.

Economic journalist James Surowiecki helped get the ball rolling on this, concluding that to arrive at Trump’s tariff rates, the White House simply “took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us” — a method Surowiecki described as “extraordinary nonsense.”.......

CNBC’s Steve Liesman told viewers, “Nobody ever heard of this formula. Nobody’s ever used this formula. So, I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along.” Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum, told the Washington Post, “They’ve got an indefensible foundation to an indefensible policy.”

Ian Dunt, a British journalist, added in reference to the White House’s methodology, “It’s hard to state just how nonsensical that actually is. You might as well divide the numbers of apples in your kitchen by the number of bagels and use it to calculate your mortgage rate. To criticize it on political or economic grounds is too generous. It operates below the level of rational thought.”

The Post’s report, quoting two White House sources, said Trump “personally selected” the formula, which “bears some striking similarities to a methodology published by Peter Navarro, Trump’s hard-charging economic adviser.”

That same article quoted a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking, who said, in reference to the president, “He’s at the peak of just not giving a f--- anymore. Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f---. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.”

It’s the worst possible combination of conditions: We’re left with a bad policy, based on a bad formula, embraced by indifferent officials who don’t know what they’re doing, but who are in positions of enormous power.