When President Donald Trump announced his controversial prices on almost all the business partners in the world, he called them “reciprocal” several times-an answer, he said, to the nations that had struck the United States with prices and injured the American economy.
But Trump’s claim is misleading not only because some of the nations struck by prices have not taken from the United States, but also because mathematics apparently used by the administration to find the prices do not hold, according to several economic experts.
The list of white house prices emitted against each location includes different prices. By announcing the Pink Garden prices on Wednesday, Trump said that the figures had been calculated on the basis of “the combined rate of all their prices, non -monetary barriers and other forms of cheating”. Trump added that he was “nice” and divided this number by half and called him “discount”.
President Donald Trump pronounces remarks on the prices in the Garden Rose at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025.
Carlos Barria / Reuters
The calculations of almost all prices have been determined by dividing the trade deficit of each nation with the value of its imports, according to the analysis of economic experts. This number was then divided in two for Trump’s “discount” for the final price percentage, experts said.
“The day before yesterday, 99% of trade economists had never seen a formula like this before,” Oren Ziv, assistant economy professor at Michigan State University on Friday, on Friday.
Several experts and economic journalists have castigated the formula shortly after the speech, including James Surowiecki, journalist and author of financial new, who explained it in A post on x.
“So we have a trade deficit of $ 17.9 billion with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $ 28 billion. $ 17.9 / $ 28 = 64%, which, according to Trump, is the rate of tariff Indonesia.
The White House later turn off An explanation of his calculations which said that he used the trade deficit and the import figures.
“This calculation presupposes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non -tariff factors that prevent the trade from balance. The prices work thanks to direct import reductions,” the White House said in a press release.
A container carrier leaves the port of Newark for the Atlantic Ocean on April 03, 2025 in New York.
Spencer Platt / Getty images
The director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, told Fox News on Thursday’s thinking of the administration behind their policy.
“So what happened is that the US trade representative examined where the trade deficits were and adjusted the prices to respond to the national emergency I think we all agree,” he said.
ZIV said that this logic does not correspond to any modern definition of trade deficits.
“When economists study commercial deficiency, they find no proof of this justification,” he said.
ZIV noted that trade deficits are partly determined by the financial markets, not just the demand for imports and manufacturing.
ZIV said that the formula is not very likely to give the results that research administration.
“Since the Second World War, most industrial countries have followed a coherent set of commercial policies. Essentially, they have learned that commercial wars do not help anyone,” he said.
