Trump’s “Reciprocal Tariffs” Are Based on Fake Calculations and Fake Economics

Trump’s tariffs are not about ‘reciprocity.’

The Trump administration recently announced a new round of so-called “reciprocal” tariffs, ranging from 10 percent to 50 percent, assigned to nearly every US trading partner. There’s a problem with its notion of “reciprocity,” though. The White House’s tariffs are intended to be real, while the so-called tariffs it is responding to are fake.

If that sounds crazy, you can read its documentation yourself. The administration’s notion of reciprocity has nothing to do with mirroring other countries’ actual policies. Instead, it simply asserts that “if trade deficits are persistent because of tariffTariffs are taxes imposed by one country on goods imported from another country. Tariffs are trade barriers that raise prices, reduce available quantities of goods and services for US businesses and consumers, and create an economic burden on foreign exporters. and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair.” In other words, the new policy is creating tariffs designed to equalize the bilateral trade balances with every country, not to respond to specific harms.

Responding to specific harms would be a valid goal: foreigners sometimes do abuse US trading relationships with discriminatory taxes, and a better version of the Trump administration might have focused on these measures. But that’s not what’s happening here.