Comment by zerocrates

He has talked about VAT, but in terms of how they ended up with those numbers, people noticed that the claimed rates don't have anything to do with the actual tariff/VAT/etc. rates, they're just based on the relative size of the US trade deficit with each country.

The gloss will be "this way captures all the various unfair things they're doing to us that are the cause of all these trade deficits" but that's just, well, gloss.