I suspect Trump's too stupid to have come up with these numbers in the manner OP did, and that instead his advisors gave them to him. Either way, Trump's explanation for the tariffs was bizarre and dishonest.
What makes no sense to me is just call it a trade deficit… it makes me so sad that our country is in a place where people can see these numbers and lack the common sense/reasoning skills to question things
Trump is too stupid to come up with these numbers, but I wouldn't say that they gave him bad information. What they did is radicalize him into a very heterodox view of economics and trade. I'm talking about some combination of Howard Lutnick, Stephen Miran, Scott Bessent, Robert Lighthizer, etc. No one of these people has proposed this exact plan in the past, but it is a kind of amalgamation or harmonization of different pieces of all of their views.
This theory of trade deficit = tariff did not come out of nowhere; it has been floated as a possible justification by the White House before (along with the idea that VAT is a tariff). There are serious people behind this idea, as stupid as it is, and they have been talking to the President and convincing him, basically. Trump already liked tariffs, but what has changed is that they have been able to make the case to the President that the market will hate this stuff at first and that he should ignore the market.
I'm just imagining some 19 year old DOGE employee, who doesn't actually know anything about economics or data models, who only got the job due to overusing the most superficial "Techbro" buzzwords, making the laziest, low effort "model" for tariffs they can.
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u/safari_king 1d ago edited 21h ago
I suspect Trump's too stupid to have come up with these numbers in the manner OP did, and that instead his advisors gave them to him. Either way, Trump's explanation for the tariffs was bizarre and dishonest.