231
The simple math behind Trump’s tariffs: How the White House calculated the new rates and why it’s not reciprocal at all
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
231 points (99.1% liked)
News
28345 readers
4763 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is there any actual rationale for this calculation, even a bad one?
His logic is: I walk into a store and buy a hat for 10$ and sell them a shoe for 7$. This means the store ripped me off by 3$. To counter this, I will add a tarriff of (3/10)/2 = 15% to all business I do with this store so they dont dare sell me anything in the future.
Ah, so not only does he not understand what a tariff is, he doesn't even really understand the concept of money, or math, or know the difference between a hat and a shoe.
Sounds about right
Trump sees trade through a mercantilism lens. Any trade deficit we have is bad by default and the deficit is how bad we are "ripped off" by importing that countries goods. The only way to "fix" the imbalance is for them to import more of our goods.
Its rooted in the 16th-18th century so its totally the best system
Yeah this. The only way to counter these tariffs is to buy as much from the US as you sell to it.
Does he think people will just start buying things they don't need to make the tariff go away?
He's a complete moron who believes he's an absolute genius who thought of something new that nobody EVER considered before, and convinced himself that its the solution to everything, based on no evidence at all, other than his massive intellect.
Or he's just a craven traitor doing Putin's bidding, and deliberately destroying our economy.
They just typed "give me a reciprocal tariff for every country the US trades with" into ChatGPT
Trump was mad
Was?
Correct.