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

[LetMyPeopleVote]

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