Comment by mrb
7 days ago
Holy cow! I had to check for myself: there are even more data points on trade balance for all countries at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html (whereas @orthonormalist used a partial list from wikipedia) and the percentages I calculate line up exactly with the Trump's full list of "Tariffs Charged to the USA" percentages (https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1907541343250878752) !!
Specifically they used 2024 trade balance figures. Example: take a random country, like Botswana, and the country's page at https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c7930.html shows a 2024 trade balance of 104.3 (exports) and 405.1 (imports) so 1-104.3/405.1 = 0.74 which matches the "74%" "tariffs charged to the USA" claimed by Trump...
Rarely you get handed such blatant evidence that someone produced bullshit numbers and/or doesn't understand where the numbers come from !
Edit: someone said it doesn't work for Japan but it does. Every country I checked by hand matches the figures exactly... For Japan the figures are from https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5880.html and their 2024 trade balance is: 79,740.8 (exports) and 148,208.6 (imports) so 1-79740/148208 = 0.46 which matches the 46% "Tariffs charged to the USA " from the table shown by Trump...