Trump tariffs based on arithmetic error, AEI says

A US senator argued these are not an economic measure, but a coercive measure.

Donald now has tariffs on you; if you stay in your place, and do nice things for Donald, they will be removed on a temporary, ongoing basis.

I also read that Congress controls spending only from internal taxation; it does not control spending from tariffs. That money goes directly to executive, which is to say Donald, and he does with it as he pleases.

One possible way this is to play out is the internal taxation being progressively eliminated in favour of tariffs, as a way to apply coercion to others and to eliminate Congress.

Donald is running the country as if it were a business, which means being a CEO with absolute power. He does not seem to understand the idea of running a country, where you lead and are in power by consent. So USA now has moved a long way to dictatorship - the CEO - and we see also the enormous and soul-destroying horrors of ICE and abuses of State power.

Its not an arithmetic error, its a conceptual error. A pretty serious one if true.

That said it makes no sense any way, and IMO high tariffs are a bargaining counter and the real reason for the formula is that it reflects how much pressure the us can put on a country by raising tariffs relative to the damage that could be done by retaliatory tarrifs.

A couple of videos that break down the "math" and data

CBC (~9m) https://youtu.be/PWhv-06DNjE

Perun (~1h) https://youtu.be/nVZ1lcw2bVU

The numbers are a measure of trade imbalance, not tariffs and currency manipulation. Theater, not competent policy

Other notes...

1. the trade imbalance figures exclude services and misrepresent the full picture

2. if you have a positive balance (you import more than you export to the US), you still get hit with a 10% value. This is why there are 115 (iirc) countries with the same 10% figure

In high-stakes calculations, there's a thing called a "sanity check" which is a quick & simple analog of a complex calculation that is done perhaps repeatedly using different approaches, often manually with traditionally simple tools such as slide rules and napkins.

In addition to the full accepted calculation procedure, as a final double-check if nothing else.

Just to make sure things are not coming out in some outlying ball-park which would be bound to indicate an error in the main approach somewhere, since more complex equations having greater number of variables or conversions simply have that many more chances for a mistake to be made.

And a completely independent recalculation which is simple, quick, and more understandable by all, which comes up in decent agreement, is a very good sign that the main calculation has been carried out correctly.

But most importantly if there is excessive disagreement, that really calls for stopping and checking every single figure backwards & forwards until discrepancies can be pinpointed and corrected.

Of course somebody involved needs to not only show an interest in this kind of reliability, but also be able to do something about it in case a sanity check like this turns up a shortage to begin with :\

this is non sensical, for there to have been a mathematical error, it first would require ,at least an attempt at useing mathematics, which we can be certain, didn't happen I hate the basturd, but trying to use logic on him is even dumber than whatever it is he's doing cunning and a complete lack of inhibition, with just possibly a dart board, is how the numbers were derived or perhaps he's pissed off, fairly deranged and out there, and decided to dump the world on its ass, cause he can, which can, of course, be "fact checked"

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43590421