Comment by mcoliver
8 days ago
Here's a csv and google sheet of the data. Turns out they aren't tariffs countries charge us. They are trade imbalance percentages. Unreal:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xK0OQ5VGl8JHmDSIgbXh...
https://gist.github.com/mcoliver/69fe48d03c12388e29cc0cd87eb...
The bit I love is that countries with which the US has a trade surplus aren't getting the opposite of a tariff (a grant, I guess) on their imports to the US, they aren't getting zero tariffs on their imports to the US, they're getting 10% tariffs.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands, two Australian territories inhabited only by penguins, get singled out for a 10% tariff.
Norfolk Island, an Australian community of 3000 with no exports to the US, gets its own 29% tariff. They're expecting a tourism boost from the publicity.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/donald-trump...
Interestingly enough the census (which I believe is the source the WH used) https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/country.xlsx does show trade with Heard & McDonald. Also reflected on the webpage: https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html#H
Now what the underlying items are that were traded? Not sure. Guessing you can dig it up in AES https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/aes/index.html but have not been able to figure that out. Let me know if you do.
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You jest, but I wonder if this is to stop shenanigans like claiming your business operates from there just to dodge tariffs.
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Once again they proceed far beyond the reach of satirists
And zero tariff for his dear friend putin. Insane!
It's even worse, they literally got their formula from a llm model (probably Grok?) => https://bsky.app/profile/dansinker.com/post/3llunnyfeoj2v
"To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for ε and φ were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4.
Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity vary. To be conservative, studies that find higher elasticities near 3-4 were drawn on. The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25."[0]
[0] https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
Do I understand this right: The evidence that they took it from a LLM is that all LLMs give the same answer and this answer describes what they did?
By that logic, it looks like Pythagoras got his theorem from an LLM...
It explains why they singled out Reunion from France, it has a separate ccTLD. That type of mistake is the kind a LLM would do, not a human...
I'm convinced. this is fucking crazy.
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If ChatGPT was available back then, sure.
Its worse than that. Its like saying you must have used chat gpt because you answered that 2+2= 4 and gasp so do the LLMs! Nevermind that its just the obvious answer to the question.
Lets see the prompt. The prompt further down in the thread that reproduces it was asking how to use tariffs to balance trade deficits with a 10% minimum. Is there any other answer then set the rate such that the deficit goes away or 10%, whichever is greater? No. That's just the answer to the question and is why ALL LLMs give the same answer.
LLMs are basically just good at sourcing ideas from the internet. Me thinks this just means that this tariff idea exists on the internet, especially since grok, chatgpt, etc all come up with the same idea. We used to not have income taxes and funded the govt with tariffs so this probably isn't a new concept despite media outlets pretending like it is.
It's good at compressing information from the internet, usually not losslessly.
Are you implying there is a very small chance that if someone posted in 2018 reddit "We should tariff Algeria at 35% because X", the LLM that the administration may have used would have agreed with random redditor?
> Me thinks this just means that this tariff idea exists on the internet
Probably from some random genius on reddit.
It is really silly to say that because an LLM gave a similar approach a single time and someone took a screencap of it without full context, that Elon and Trump are sitting in the whitehouse asking Grok what to. This level of hyperbole is why reading about anything to do with the two of them is really exhausting.
People are saying they literally used the trade deficit and the formula they published that they claim doesn’t do this multiplies that value by 4 and then 0.25. Yeah… that is what we are dealing with.
> Elon and Trump are sitting in the whitehouse asking Grok what to
Not perhaps Elon or Trump themselves (doubt Trump can actually use a computer), but it could very well be one of the teens like the so-called "Big Balls" that apparently have their hands in everything.
> This level of hyperbole is why reading about anything to do with the two of them is really exhausting
Almost as exhausting as their daily actions / tweets / rants.
>It is really silly to say that because an LLM gave a similar approach a single time and someone took a screencap of it without full context, that Elon and Trump are sitting in the whitehouse asking Grok what to.
A similar approach to a close-ended question.
The original screenshot doesnt show the prompt. The one reproducing it asks for a tariff policy to eliminate trade deficits with a 10% minimum. Umm... hello? There is only one answer to that. The greater value between 10% and a rate based on the deficit. Of course the Trump policy and all 4 LLM answers agree. The answer is determined by the question.
Its like accusing little Timmy of cheating on his math homework because he said 2+2=4 and -- GASP -- so do all the LLMs!
Wow. So they came up with zero-effort estimates of the tariff rate which would balance the trade deficit. The method is like something you'd be asked to criticise in A level economics.
Then they incorrectly labelled these numbers as reciprocal tarrifs implying this is what other countries charge the US.
The worst of it is that all of this misinformation will be happily accepted as truth by so many people. It's now going to be almost impossible to have people realise the truth, especially those people who support Trump. Ugh.
> It's now going to be almost impossible to have people realise the truth, especially those people who support Trump
NOW? It's been this way for close to 10 years.
Are we factoring in digital/service trades? For example, Netflix is in Vietnam. There are many Netflix subscribers in Vietnam. Does that get factored into the trade deficit? Or is it only physical goods that get factored in?
Vietnam uses many US services such as Microsoft Office, Netflix, ChatGPT, Facebook ads, etc. This is revenue that directly go into the pockets of American companies.
No services, only goods. This is according to @JamesSurowiecki on Twitter, one of the first to reverse engineer the equation for how they’re coming up with the numbers. So Office, Netflix, etc wouldn’t count against the deficit.
This is where the calculation is extremely unfair to a country like Vietnam. They export low value physical goods and import high value services like ChatGPT, engineering consultations, etc. They're getting screwed by this tariff plan.
Any tariff based on trade deficit needs to account for services.
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I'm glad I read your comment because I've been wondering the whole time whether services are factored in. It's absolutely insane that the administration is ignoring the exported value of some of the biggest companies in America that all these countries are buying services from.
Wow, everything's computer!
>Are we factoring in digital/service trades?
???
Of course not. The entire time Trump is railing against the deficit, he's talking only about goods. He wants to bring back manufacturing to America, didn't you hear?
No one asked him this shit on the campaign trail?
There is a dedicated article in an Austrian newspaper about that: https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000264129/das-verrueckt... They essentially call it batshit crazy.
Funny how Russia is absent from the list
They’re sanctioned up the wazoo
> U.S. total goods trade with Russia were an estimated $3.5 billion in 2024.
Among European Union members:
> The total bilateral trade in goods reached €851 billion in 2023.
That makes no difference to who should get tariffs by the administration's own logic. They're cozying up to Russia. No other explanation is feasible.
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Ukraine has around $1.2 billion and still got 10% tariffs.
Europe buys oil and gas from Russia. But EU has set maximum prices what screws russia.
Considering Russia has been disobeying orders and Australia and Japan have done almost nothing to the USA, then why not give it to them a bit harder?
So? Let’s not give it too hard to poor Russia?
Current US sanctions on Russia make trade a moot point, that’s why.
Total trade with Russia in 2024: $3.5bn
Total trade with Ukraine in 2024: $2.9bn
https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia...
So, Ukraine will get an exemption, too, right? Because their trade is even a mooter point, right? Right?!
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They tariffed uninhabited land, countries that export nothing to the US, and countries for which the US has a trade surplus.
All those circumstances also would have made the point moot... yet they all still made the list.
There is still more trade with Russia than many countries in the list. Even Syria and Iran got tariffs.
The administration placed tariffs on uninhabited islands. I don't think they gave a rat's patootie about the volume of trade.
Didn't seem to be an issue for the penguin islands.
Besides the sanctions, the G7+EU hold something around 300 billion $ of funds so far owned by the Ruzzian central bank. Not enough to rebuild Ukraine, but it will be a decent start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confiscation_of_Russian_centra...
Stealing the assets of countries like Venezuela and Russia caused this to happen by making the rest of the world move off of the dollar to secure their asses. Doing more of them is the dumbest idea that can be proposed.
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At this point, Trump could hoist the russian flag at the white house and republicans would still turn a blind eye.
[flagged]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
I see how the tariff numbers may have been calculated. But why is it done that way? What is the rationale behind such a calculation? Is this a way to balance the existing trade deficits? How does it work?
Would appreciate you (or anybody else) shed some light on the economics of the thing.
The label "tariffs charged to the US" is just straight-up wrong, either due to incompetence or malice (likely to justify the high tariffs).
But basing the tariffs on import/export ratio makes sense if your goal is to be a net exporter with every country, as it discourages imports until that's the case. It's still somewhat arbitrary though; my guess is that the White House is pursuing that goal mostly for political, not economical reasons.
It's because he thinks trade deficits are somehow a subsidy. He has literally used the terms interchangeably. He's just dumb.
I would love to hear the plan on how the US can be a net exporter of coffee with, say, Indonesia (32% tariff). Perhaps we can take the funds from the tariffs and build mass greenhouses?
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You can see the report here: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
Given that both elasticities were set to cancel each other, that's why you get a flat trade deficit/imports calculation.
This is, sadly, the way a freshman econ student would calculate tariffs.
If he used real numbers the tariffs would be so low that it wouldn't make any sense.
Suggestion that the admin is vibe governing: https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3lluo7jmsss...
lol when I saw him hold up his piece of cardboard I thought, “yeah that’s definitely random numbers he invented 2 hours ago”
Does this mean that software worldwide gets a boon since:
1. It’s not affected by these tariffs 2. It wasn’t used as a basis for the calculation
It seems more likely that the EU will retaliate by taxing (or prohibiting) US services.
The Eu will take care of that by slapping taxes/tariffs or regulations, and the rest of the world will also do the same. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Here's the official source for the calculation: [0].
Also, there are some hints this might be from a LLM [1].
And an official statement that it's about trade imbalances and not reciproc tarrifs [2].
And they ask the affected country to "not retaliate" [3].
IMHO Trump tries to lead the US like he managed his businesses. And here I'd like to refer to the three casinos he owned that are now insolvent [4].
[0] https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/114272481124239587
[1] https://universeodon.com/@henryk@chaos.social/11427313249281...
[2] https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
[3] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/02/business/liberation-day-t...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atl...
What’s the actual tariffs other countries are charging the US then?
Thank you for posting this, the misinformation is clear as day. But lying is without consequences if people are dumb or lethargic enough, it seems.
This will get very interesting.
Interesting. While I think these tariffs are a bad idea, I'm not qualified to fully pass judgement. However, knowing Trump, when I saw the numbers I instantly suspected they would be wrong.