alt Hacker NewsGenuine questions: why are they calling it “reciprocal”? Is the US just matching the tariffs set by the other countries?
Also, this announcement has wiped out any plans of buying tech products this year, plus a holiday to the US and Canada later in the year. Good thing too, as the entire globe is probably staring down the barrel of a recession.
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It's like the blaming in a playground fight; who started first? For context: https://nitter.net/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
It's just spin. The new duties are purely punitive.
Because when the blowback comes, people will be looking to cast blame for starting this whole trade war, and when that time comes Trump will point to the word "reciprocal" and say "we didn't start this, we were only reciprocating".
> Is the US just matching the tariffs set by the other countries?
No. Trump claims that the new tariffs are a 50% discount on what those countries tariff US goods at. (Even if that's questionable - is VAT a tariff?)
If he's correct, or anywhere close, this is a "tough love" strategy to force negotiations. We'll see how it goes. It also plays to his base - why should we tariff any less than they do us? And they have a point, it's the principle of the thing.
Someone calculated the formula used. They divided the trade deficit of each country by total trade of each country and assumed that was all a tariff.
So for example Indonesia and the US traded $28 billion. The US has a 17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. 17.9/28 =0.639, or 64%, which is assumed to be all caused by tariffs. So they divide by two and impose 32%.
Anyway no the US isn't matching tariffs they're dramatically exceeding them.