"Who makes policy this way? The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense."
That graph of the average US tariff rate over time, which I also saw in a BBC article, really brings home how seismic a change Trump's tariffs announcement is.
In all my years I have never heard of a tariff being calculated in such a way. The fact that chatbots are readily willing to spit out such an answer is pretty damning and also troublesome.
Ostensibly, Trump had access to some of the world's best economists if he wanted them. Even if he wanted to pursue dumb policy, surely they could have found someone capable of doing the math. If it's true that they would rather have an intern ask a chatbot for a convenient answer, we are in for some truly tough times.
Paul Krugman had some commentary on this
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-k...
So it has nothing to do with reciprocality but it's simply 10% or the trade deficit, whichever is larger?
"Who makes policy this way? The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense."
Spot on. It's mob boss / bully tactics.
Appeasing bullies does. not. work.
That graph of the average US tariff rate over time, which I also saw in a BBC article, really brings home how seismic a change Trump's tariffs announcement is.
Tariff Formulas [1]
[1] - https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations
It's worth pointing out that chatbots have been known to fail economics questions: https://www.landsburg.org/gpt4.pdf
In all my years I have never heard of a tariff being calculated in such a way. The fact that chatbots are readily willing to spit out such an answer is pretty damning and also troublesome.
Ostensibly, Trump had access to some of the world's best economists if he wanted them. Even if he wanted to pursue dumb policy, surely they could have found someone capable of doing the math. If it's true that they would rather have an intern ask a chatbot for a convenient answer, we are in for some truly tough times.
Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s https://www.theverge.com/news/642620/trump-tariffs-formula-a...