Can anyone tell me why this is a bad idea? The effective pair wise tariff rate of these countries is still larger than the US and simply brings it more in line. Why is this a bad thing?
They’re imposing tariffs on uninhabited islands. They don’t care enough to even try and make it plausible. That’s how stupid they think their supporters are and how much contempt they have for them.
And, er, based on the response from their supporters, seems like they're not wrong.
The markets, however, will be far less forgiving.
^ is, er, not true, though.
They based it on _trade deficits_ (plus some random messing around which resulted in some uninhabited islands with no trade or independent trade policy being assigned a value), not tariffs. Which makes no sense at all.
The highest tariffs are applied to countries like Madagascar, from which the US imports less than half a billion dollars of goods per annum. A drop in the bucket. Another silly example is the Falkland Islands, whose annual exports to the US don't even hit thirty million dollars. The formula they hit upon is what a high school student would come up with, and is not informed by any actual plan.
Only if you calculate them wrong. E.g. for the EU they included sales tax as a tariff, which makes no sense since that applies to ALL products. Domestic or otherwise.