Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.

So we… https://t.co/PBjF8xmcuv

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 2, 2025

This tweet is correct, but it's actually worse than I thought: in calculating the tariff rate, Trump's people only used the trade deficit in goods. So even though we run a trade surplus in services with the world, those exports don't count as far as Trump is concerned.…

— James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) April 2, 2025

This might be the first large-scale application of AI technology to geopolitics.. 4o, o3 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily. pic.twitter.com/r1GGubcz8c

— rohit (@krishnanrohit) April 3, 2025

This makes no sense, they can't be using that formula as it's about the Delta in tariff rate not the tariff rate.

— NomBibimbap ?? (@BibimbapNom) April 3, 2025