4mo ago

Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists

www.theguardian.com

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/19241243

Waving a big chart as a prop in the White House Rose Garden, Donald Trump suggested his new tariff plan was simple: “Reciprocal – that means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple. Can’t get simpler than that.”
Perhaps a bit too simple. The method used to calculate the most important numbers in international trade, politics and economics has left some of the world’s leading experts shocked.
For each country, the White House looked up its trade in goods deficit for 2024, then divided that by the total value of imports. Trump, to be “kind”, said he would, however, offer a discount, so halved that figure. The calculation was even distilled into a formula.

United States | News & Politics @lemmy.ml

floofloof @lemmy.ca

4mo ago

Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists

www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flawed-tariff-calculations-stun-economists

Politics @beehaw.org

Powderhorn @beehaw.org

4mo ago

Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists

www.theguardian.com /us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flawed-tariff-calculations-stun-economists

47 comments

- Keeping a business running takes sustained effort. This sack of shit is more in the strip out all the copper and turn a quick buck leaving wreckage in your wake type of business man.
  
  With the "stripping all the copper" analogy you're describing a strung out drug addict more than a businessman, though.
  I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you, just that you're not making any supporting claim for him being a businessman.
- I mean I think I read one was bought out in the bankruptcy and is doing alright under new management. Maybe we should find the guy who bought it
- well, tbf for no reason at all, some of those bankruptcies were just to stick the russian mob money laundering operation under the rug and the losses to the shareholders.
  So it wasn't just incompetence, it was also malevolence and moral bankruptcy.
  
  So it wasn't just incompetence, it was also malevolence and moral bankruptcy.
  Also known as the GOP Trifecta.
- "hurr durr we need someone to run the country like a business!"
The trump regime was designed to TANK the US economy so that stocks, businesses, and industries can be bought by billionaires at rock bottom prices.
All is going according to plan.
- It is kind of seeming like this. Anyone who has a ton of cash on hand can get amazing deals on assets. Trump has said as much.
- They are also designed to give Trump leverage over companies and countries.
  
  Kind of like punching your neighbor in the face, shooting yourself in the foot, then begging your neighbor for help.
The economists are only “stunned” because they’re used to dealing with logic, reason, and numbers that make sense. You have to throw those things out the window when dealing with Mango Mussolini, folks!
Republicans have been confidently and fully wrong about economics for like a hundred years now dude, a republican making up economic bullshit that will hurt the American people should not be a surprise.
A brain dead Orange Turd running our country. What could go wrong.
- Uh excuse me, where is your ridiculously oversized truck and bedsheet-sized flags?
- +10%
  Unless you are Russia...
54d chess you fools
- Trump probably couldn't even figure out how to stalemate or win every tic-tac-toe game.
Hey, he used the good crayons
Someone made it in excel in 10 minutes.
- at $87,000 per minute.
  
  Possibly using ChatGPT or another LLM.
- Excel at least uses some sort of organizational schema. Those charts are thrown together completely at random.
The reason the numbers are idiotic is because they don’t need to make sense. There is no point to these tariffs other than to crash the US economy so that fat cat rich scum can buy everything and create corporate feudalism.
‘Willing sycophants’ came up with simplistic formula that has thrown global economy into disarray
Way to shoot us in the crotch republiQans and eligible non-voters! You suck!
- B-but muh egg prices! Also, something something okay with the economy crashing if it owns the libs.
He absolutely believes he's a genius who has thought of this solution to our economic problems that NOBODY else has ever considered, because nobody is as smart as he is. All this talk of how wrong it is only proves to him how much smarter he is. His tariffs are so innovative, even the most intelligent economists don't get it.
But he does, because he's the most intelligent human to ever exist, and he is thinking way above them.
The only thing that surprised me about the idiotic numbers was that they weren't overwritten by even dumber ones in sharpie.
Chat, are we cooked? (Yes)
Mentally, this is where I am at: https://youtu.be/rN6fcu1qCcw
- Merely watching that guy “dab” was worth it. And he did it three times!
  
  Now this is epic
“It is] quite an extraordinary calculation after months of work behind the scenes,” said Jim Reid, the global head of macro research at Deutsche Bank. “It] didn’t add much confidence on there being an in-depth strategic implementation plan.”
lol. First of all Deutsche Bank, how are you still operating, and secondly it's your fucking fault the demented rapist is even here (thanks to Justice Kennedy's son). Thirdly, anyone who thinks a trump administration effort is going to have an "in-depth strategic plan" is smoking crack. (Those of you arguing 'project 2025' remember that came from outside the administration)
That's what happens when you let an unqualified lunatic make decisions about things he doesn't understand
And 34% on Taiwan won’t help anything either
BREAKING NEWS! The deranged con man game show host is actually a moron. Who could possibly have predicted this?
Odd (not at all) that Russia is not included. I know that we lot do about $3.5 billion in trade with them but some places that we hit with tariffs are not even inhabited.
Fuck this piece of shit.
The thing that makes no sense to me is… who is actually making those calculations?
It sure as hell isn’t trump, I doubt his ability to understand what a trade deficit is.
Is he even capable of describing his goal to someone in a useful way such that they could come up with the calculations?
- It's literally chatgpt, or one of the other AIs. They're all spitting out the same nonsense.
  
  I mean vaguely plausible except that I don’t think ChatGPT could do anything with what trump could ask it.
  And honestly ChatGPT would probably come up with a much much more sane policy than this one
- The dude majored in economics and very clearly does not understand how a trade deficit works.
  
  From Trump University?
"Make America Wealthy Again"
Tariffs don't charge the foreign entity
American companies pay the tariffs
The "America" being made wealthy must mean the government
The same government that isn't paying out to USAID, researchers, or anything else DOGE plugged
Less money out, more money in.
This will be remembered as the largest migration of money between classes in US history.
And you made him president again not mentioning how he was even able to rise so high in power.
United Stupids of America

47 comments