Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s
When President Donald Trump began yesterdayas announcement of the White Houseas latest trade policy brandishing a novelty-sized cardboard sign labeled aReciprocal Tariffs,a the immediate and nearly unanimous response was bafflement. Trump slapped a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports into the US, including from uninhabited islands, plus absurdly high rates on specific countries, supposedly based on tariffs charged to the USA" aAwhich didn't match up to other, non-cardboard-sign-based estimates. Stock markets have plummeted and consumers are facing down sharp price hikes on potentially almost everything they buy.A
Where did these numbers come from? Apparently, an oversimplified calculation that several major AI chatbots happen to recommend.
Economist James Surowiecki quickly reverse-engineered a possible explanation for the tariff pricing. He found you could recreate each of the White Houseas numbers by simply taking a given countryas trade deficit with the US and dividing it by their total exports to the US. Halve that number, and you get a ready-to-use adiscounted reciprocal tariff.a The White House objected to this claim and published the formula it …