However dumb you think the Trump taxes are, they’re dumber
By 
To follow up on Dan’s post below, it’s remarkable how insane the underlying “logic” of the Trump tariffs is:
Even given that it's Trump, I cannot believe they said "We'll just divide the trade deficit by imports and tell people that's the tariff rate." And then they decided to set our tariffs by just cutting that totally made-up rate in half! This is so dumb and deceptive.— 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
One upshot of this is calling these tariffs “reciprocal” is just straight-up disinformation:
This is so very not complicated that it cannot possibly be an honest mistake. bsky.app/profile/norm…
[image or embed]— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Anyway, congratulations again to the “Biden make borger too exponsive” voters who were critical to Trump winning the battlegrounds.
…LOL good luck with the “we have hit you but no need to hit back” approach:
Treasury Secretary, genius negotiator: “I wouldn’t try to retaliate. As long as you don’t retaliate this is the high end of the number.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO0G…
[image or embed]— Catherine Rampell (@crampell.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 5:04 PM