alt Hacker News"This guy cracked the tariff formula: @orthonormalist
It’s simply the nation’s trade deficit with us divided by the nation’s exports to us.
Yes. Really.
Vietnam: Exports 136.6, Imports 13.1 Deficit = 123.5
123.5/136.6 = 90%"
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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 !
thanks for the information. In light of this, it seems pretty silly: economy on a world scale isn't a line, it's more like a ring (country A has a deficit with country B, which has a deficit with country ... N which has a deficit with country A) at best. Isn't it like saying everyone should trade everything at the same price with everyone?
Can anyone else confirm this is true? I’m feeling a bit sceptical here.
...and every country USA has a positive trade with, will get slapped with the 10% tariff. Every country on the table Trump posted, that have received the 10% tariff, the US have a positive trade with.
No winners in this one.
Vietnam exports low value physical goods to the US. The US sells high value non-physical services such as Microsoft office, ChatGPT, Netflix, Facebook ads, iOS Appstore fees, iCloud subscriptions, etc to Vietnam. Other services include engineering consultants, US tax auditors, US consulting companies, etc. None of these are factored into the formula.
So a country like Vietnam gets royally screwed by this formula. They are actually buying way more from the US than just the physical goods.
If you're Vietnam, it's very hard to "just take it" as suggested by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The formula is flawed in the first place.
If we truly want fair, the formula should be based on total profit of the goods and services sold. Services have much higher margins than physical goods typically.