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Comment by dragonwriter

8 days ago

They claim that they are "reciprocal" tariffs, and their chart shows them at exactly half the tariffs they claim are imposed by the target or 10%, whichever is higher. But it is suspicious that the column on their infographic showing the foreign tariffs has fine print indicating that includes other non-tariff things that you can't easily calculated as a neat rate the way tariffs are. And, some people running the numbers have determined that the quoted foreign "tariff" amounts are consistently the US trade deficit in goods with the target country divided by that country's exports to the US, with a minimum of 10%.

So, despite being labelled "tariffs", the actual basis for calculating the "reciprocal tariffs" has nothing to do with tariffs.