The numbers appear to be based on the trade deficit alone, not on any differences in import duties etc.
To quote Alex Scaggs of FT:
Take the US’s goods trade deficit with any particular country, and divide it by the total amount of goods imported from that country. Cut that percentage in half, and there’s the US’s “reciprocal” tariff rate.
It’s all drunk monkeys driving a train… there is no economic theory to expect consistency from.
> Besides, what do you do with a country where US is a net exporter? Provide subsidies for imports?
In this instance, I believe the thought pattern is: "we're being smart here".
Once people accept that this administration is very much like the Russian regime, where everyone is the type of person playing to an aesthetic, you see this stuff coming miles away.
This is what these sorts of people would do.
“Belief” or “dogma” or even “idea” would work, but there’s no logic in that claim.
There’s not even a policy goal. If the intent is to convert the US from a net importer to neutral or even a net exporter, it means our cost of production needs to be about average. Which means our populace’s quality of life needs to be about average; wealthy countries are more expensive to produce in. Mix in the supposed interest in economic and social liberty, and you’ve got a country trying to destroy its own wealth in the name of controlling what its freedom-loving citizens buy
There is no logic here. It’s drunk monkeys all the way down.
1. Why do you believe this is true?
2. Why do you believe that 0 trade deficits are a good thing?