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> Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports. Note that the White House has both (1
by dragonwriter 2y ago
> Someone figured out that the new tariffs are just our trade deficit with that country divided by the country's exports.
Note that the White House has both (1) officially denied this, (2) provided the formula they assert was used as support for that denial; but the formula is exactly what they are denying but with two additional globally-constant elasticity factors in the divisor, however, those elasticity factors are 4 and 0.25, so...
- jmeyer2k 2y agowait seriously? can you provide a source? That is some serious denial of reality by the administration
- stingrae 2y agofor reference, the Deputy White House Press Secretary's tweet (providing evidence of (2): https://x.com/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901 https://x.com/KushDesai47/status/1907618136444067901
- dragonwriter 2y agoIt also proves (1), since it is a response (QRT, rather than a comment) to a tweet describing the trade deficit/exports approach, and starts with "No we literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers.", and then presents the formula proving (2).
- tailspin2019 2y agoWhat’s QRT?
- MarcelOlsz 2y agoI assume quote retweet.
- alfiedotwtf 2y agoThe Onion couldn't even make half of this up without looking like bad writers... but here we are
- stavros 2y agoReality isn't constrained by quality bars.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoSomeone quoted this headline elsewhere, so I looked up the actual article[0]. It would have been hilarious back in 2001. It's... scarily prescient in 2025. Can satire be just too good? [0]: https://theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-prosperi-1819565882/ https://theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-pea...
- rtkwe 2y agoThat formula just simplifies to trade_deficit/2*total_imports per country. It doesn't disprove anything it just looks fancier but the two extra terms are constants that simplify to 2. If you do the math it lines up for every country that didn't get the default 10% rate. https://imgur.com/a/jBTiz7T https://imgur.com/a/jBTiz7T
- wonnage 2y agoI've seen people use "sanewashing" to refer to the type of comment you're replying to, there's no sane explanation but people try to come up with one because the world doesn't make sense otherwise
- Gud 2y agoIt makes perfect sense. You have a narcissistic asshole in the White House who got elected because the Democratic Party fumbled the ball.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoSome corrupt members of Congress and the judiciary deserve some of the blame.
- ikt 2y agoI wouldn't put 100% of the blame on the Democrats, here in Australia we are frequently voting for the least worst option not the best, and I'm not sure how the Democrats weren't the least worst option when compared to the other option but for some reason a whole heap of people decided to stay home this time and this is the result, hope they still feel happy with their decision
- tunesmith 2y agoI've heard that there's polling lately to indicate that's not true (unsure on source, it might have been an interview at Vox.com), and that higher turnout would have advantaged the Republicans further.
- roenxi 2y agoProbably stemming from David Shor's Blue Rose Research. I bumped into that @ https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/new-insights-on-why-harris-lostand https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/new-insights-on-why-harris-...
- munksbeer 2y ago
- anigbrowl 2y ago'Excuse me, we used Greek symbols to calculate this! Checkmate, libs!'
- sandworm101 2y agoJust dont tell them about the arabic numerals. I dont want to buy a new calculator. Not under these tarrifs.
- ornornor 2y ago[flagged]
- mpreda 2y ago> arabic numerals Soon to be "Numerals of America"
- baobabKoodaa 2y agoYou mean "God Bless The America Freedom Numerals Sponsored By Brawndo"?
- chasd00 2y agoThe math mutilater!
- layer8 2y agoI’m afraid they’ll be learning about reverse Polish notation.
- VectorLock 2y agoIt really smacks of an "I am very smart" attempt.
- namaria 2y agoWow I really just read a .gov website trying to obscure a formula by multiplying 0.25 by 4. I'm stunned. https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations "To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for ε and φ were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4. Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity vary. To be conservative, studies that find higher elasticities near 3-4 (e.g., Broda and Weinstein 2006; Simonovska and Waugh 2014; Soderbery 2018) were drawn on. The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25."
- oefrha 2y agoIn practice I believe at least 90% of Americans can’t figure out what that formula actually means; but if they drop the epsilon phi bullshit only 70% can’t figure it out. So it’s pretty effective obfuscation after all.
- stabbles 2y ago"Assuming that offsetting exchange rate and general equilibrium effects are small enough to be ignored" Yes, let's assume the world is constant and changes are made in isolation.
- ta1243 2y agoWhat's the laden velocity of a spherical import with no air resistance?
- giantrobot 2y agoAfrican or European?
- kragen 2y agoThank you for finding this. It's extremely valuable for those of us who are trying to make sense of the tariffs.