Yesterday, the Trump administration announced a series of tariffs it characterized as “reciprocal,” ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent and calculated for every country on Earth. The country-specific rates were made public at the press conference announcing the tariffs, as well as on White House social media.
However, despite the characterization of the tariffs as “reciprocal,” and despite the accompanying graphics referring to foreign “tariffs charged to the USA including currency manipulation and trade barriers,” the White House did not actually measure tariffs, currency manipulation, or trade barrier policies employed by other countries. Instead, it drew its estimates from something else entirely: bilateral trade deficits in goods.
Specifically, the White House documents appear to allege the “tariffs charged to the USA” are the greater of two different quantities: (a) 10 percent, and (b) the 2024 US trade deficit in goods with a given country, divided by the total quantity of US imports from that country.
Set aside, for now, the damage to economic growth these tariffs will cause, or the distributional impact of one of the largest tax hikes in US history. Other Tax Foundation work will cover that. (We currently estimate the cumulative amount of Trump tariffs at $3.1 trillion over 10 years, amounting to a roughly $2,100 tax increase per household in 2025 alone.)
The method for calculating other countries’ so-called “tariffs” for reciprocal purposes is nonsense. Bilateral deficits are not tariffs, nor are they meaningful anyway; trade in services is relevant; and tariffs cannot be used to target overall trade deficits. The overall result is an extraordinary policy error that will severely damage the economy while failing to reduce the US trade deficit.
Fuck everyone who voted for him. This is on you.
One should expect conservatives to vote for whomever is leading their party, regardless of how insane or hypocritical it would seem. They are united in this combination of a sunken-cost fallacy, stubborn pride and willful ignorance.
The non-voters are the ones who should draw the most ire. Apathy and defeatism had no place in the last election. There was a clear choice to be made to keep this country, as we knew it, afloat, and the non-voters did less than nothing to assist. Fuck them, ever so much.
I am just going to say that the republicans/conservatives that continue to vote for the same party because its a tradition in their family is just as stupid as the non-voters. In no way shape or form should this style of “sports team” voting be a thing, instead vote on the party because of their policies and not the person because they wear red. In saying that the non-voters are just as idiotic, and yet all they want to blame rather then themselves is the Dems and their messaging. Jfc your telling me you did not vote because option “b” which was blatant in their authoritarian, mysognistic and racist messaging was not enough to vote for Kamala because they did not find her compelling. My god the idiocracy is alive and well over their.
This isn’t sports, or even a parliamentary system. You don’t have to just accept whoever “your” party nominates.
Too soon to say that, wait until Americans start starving.
It’s never too soon, or too often.