Comment by hliyan
7 days ago
Sri Lankan here. They just slapped 44% on us (higher than on China). The country is just trying to recover from the economic crisis and the sovereign debt default of 2022, so we have very high import duties on certain items (e.g. vehicles) to discourage dollar outflow. Looks like the US just saw that as hostile and decided to strike back.
The numbers appear to be based on the trade deficit alone, not on any differences in import duties etc.
That is correct. It was empircally proven here: https://www.ft.com/content/c4f9c7f6-0753-4458-840e-bcde1b74a...
To quote Alex Scaggs of FT:
All countries tested against this theory are correct within 1-2 percent.
you can just read the methodology where they published it here: https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
Now somebody factor in Services and rerun the numbers.
This is interesting. I don't know the details of Trump's tariff policy, but if this is correct, it would follow that the policy should have some mechanism to reduce the tariffs as the trade imbalance is reduced.
8 replies →
You're right I think it's MAX(10%,(imports-exports)/imports) as a general tariff plus targeted reciprocal (in some cases, not all)
It does nothing with "hostile". For China, yes, but for most other countries tariff is simply ($USA-import - $USA-export)/$USA-import. That simply, numbers are check for many many countries. I'm sure, USA imports a lot of tea from Sri Lanka and some fruits and wood/furniture.
(Freshly made Sri Lankian tea is the best, IMHO! I mean, proper tea, not all these grasses, berries and synthetic aromas which are named "tea" in modern western world).
I would have assumed it was Sri Lankan textiles that were a major cause of the tariffs.
Any recommendations for tea brands/products?
Unfortunately, no, as I've changed country of living year ago and still can not find way to good tea in new place. Also, I'm not sure, that recommendations from Europe is actual for you even if I have one.
But really best "black" tea of my life (and I spent most of my life in country with strong tea culture, where loose tea and teapots are still very popular, and not, it is not UK!) was bough at random tea factory in the middle of nowhere in Sri Lanka, packed in simple 1kg vacuum bags. No brand, no name, only date of picking (two days ago) and packing (today at the day of bought) :-)
As a local, the brand called Dilmah is just a regular supermarket brand for us, but I hear it's quite popular in places like Australia and New Zealand.
Ahmad Ceylon Tea is a good strong black tea. They mainly trade in Middle Eastern markets I think so check Arab/Indian grocery shops
[flagged]
[flagged]
What you are describing is fairly easy to get, at least in Europe, e.g. from https://www.whittard.com/tea/tea-type/green-tea/dragon-well-...
They also have some of GPs favorite: https://www.whittard.com/all/ceylon-orange-pekoe-loose-tea-p...
3 replies →
I prefer tea from Hangzhou as well vs Sri Lankan tea. I get it currently shipped via HK as it is very hard to find good tea otherwise.
1 reply →
> They just slapped 44% on us (higher than on China).
Not true, China's is on top of its existing tariffs.
So 53% on China in total, because the previous rate was 20%
The strange thing I find is that Trump is not going after the companies who were the ones that decided to move production to China in the first place.
(waves from across Lake Beira)
It's mind-boggling because the US has been trying very very hard to pull Sri Lanka away from China for a decade now
I would be surprised if the current US administration even knows where Sri Lanka is, let alone our pre-Trump foreign policy with them.