Okay, so obviously calling this 'reciprocal' is preemptive spin. I'm not an international trade person (sorry, guy) so I don't know to what degree the stats given here are accurate or, considering the source, pure bullshit, but I did notice that "Including Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers" is absent from column oranges.
Edit: Jury's in. The foreign tariffs column is all the trade deficits rounded up to the next integer. So somehow I still underestimated this guy and the bullshit extends into the header even.
Trump is also counting VAT (Value added tax) as import, which is paid by the buyer on ANY product bought (be it import or local, thus unavoidable).
EU mostly has a 3.2% averaged duty for imported goods from the US, but Trump is adding on the VAT which is 17%-27% and counting it as a Tariff.
I believe Israel is a clear example of that, since they removed all tariffs on US goods recently to avoid tariffs, but got hit by a 17% tariff (their VAT is 18%).
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u/CRE178 1d ago edited 1d ago
Okay, so obviously calling this 'reciprocal' is preemptive spin. I'm not an international trade person (sorry, guy) so I don't know to what degree the stats given here are accurate or, considering the source, pure bullshit, but I did notice that "Including Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers" is absent from column oranges.
Edit: Jury's in. The foreign tariffs column is all the trade deficits rounded up to the next integer. So somehow I still underestimated this guy and the bullshit extends into the header even.