In case anyones looking at this and asking question like “Why has Cambodia been dunked with 49% when they’re clearly not a competitor to the US” or “Why is Trump claiming that the European Union has a 40% tariff on the US when the actual mean tariff on US goods into the EU is less than 5%”, here’s your answer to how these figures have been calculated.

• Take the US trade deficit with a given country (eg. China is $292bn)
• Take the total good imported by US (for China that’s $439bn)
• Divide the first figure by the second! Why? Who knows! It’s a number! Less talk more first grade arithmetic (if you’re still following that gives us 67%)
• That gives us a random number which we’ll pretend is that country’s tariff of US goods even though it’s completely unrelated in every way. We’ll divide it by two to get the new tariff rate for imports from that country. Why? Honestly if you’re still expecting there to be an answer to that question I’m wondering if you’ve been following. (that gives us 34%, well actually it gives us 33.5% but I’m not sure the Trump administration understands the idea of fractions so we’ll just round it up from there)

The “reason” behind this is that Trump seems to think trade deficits are really bad, which is bad news for the US because it’s had a trade deficit for the last 50 years. We’ll ignore the fact that based on GDP it’s been the wealthiest country in the world for that time though.

Anyway, just to give everyone an idea of how completely, utterly unrelated to anything meaningful that figure is, let’s take Cambodia. The country is very poor compared to the US so can’t afford to buy anything that the US manufacters (Cambodians aren’t driving round in Teslas or IMessaging each other). Some US companies use it for clothing manufacture because labour is cheap in Cambodia (see the previous bit about Cambodia being much poorer than the US). This means that Cambodia imports close to nothing from the US compared to what it exports, giving it a close to 100% trade deficit, so we wind up with a 49% tariff on Cambodia.

I genuinely don’t understand the mindset that looks at the US’s explotation of cheap labour in Cambodia and interprets the US as the victim in that relationship, but hey-ho maybe I’m just not biggly-smart enough to understand the 4d chess moves at play here. . .

Reference (because unfortunately none of what I said was made up and that geniunely is the calculation): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flawed-tariff-calculations-stun-economists

Edit: After making fun of Trump for not understanding the enconomy, I went and conflated per capita GDP with GDP. Doh! Now corrected.

Trump: Meta will invest $500 billion.

Truth: Meta will invest around $60 billion.

Thats a gross mis representation of what’s factually correct in monetary terms.

This fucking asshat is going to sink the American economy. No major company is going to do this. Why would TSMC spend “$500 billion” to build a factory?

Them just paying the tariff would be less than building a new factory. They just need to survive trumps term and frankly, when the U.S. can’t get chips at an affordable price from Taiwan, those tariffs will fall away like a pillar f sand during high tide.

Absolutely dumbest fucking turd on the planet.

Did you happen to notice the one country not on the list?

Here I’ll give you a hint it’s name starts with an “R” and is run by a man who’s name starts with a “P” and is currently at war with a country that starts with a “U”…

This is killing so many small businesses. I know mine is basically dead now

Russia?

GlObAL ReCESSioN

Can they fucking stop threatening us like we’re stupid children? Life has been getting more expensive worldwide for a decade and we all know now who is to blame.

I don’t fucking care about new toyota prices in the us, I want to buy potatoes in poland. Fuck off with your recessions and bullshit economies.

What a dumbass

Stop calling them reciprocal.

Oh boy. It’s stagflation time

China: 34%

Added note that this is cumulative so it’s 54% total. Confirmed by Press secretary earlier.

Trump clearly has some feelings about Vietnam. He used his “bone spurs” excuse to avoid being sent over there back in the day. Lmao

What a pussy

In 2020, I thought Covid might crash the economy. You know, history repeats itself. But oh, was I wrong; it’ll all be caused by a single fuckwit which deserves to be tortured.

Fuck anyone involved in making the world a worse place. I hope they all die in fucking agony.

Thanks for typing out the percentages, so far I’ve only seen emotional news reports about it without any detailed info.

Are these tariffs on ALL goods from a certain country? Eg, does 34% on China mean 34% on ALL Chinese goods or just certain ones like cars?

Well, one of two things will happen now.

• The US economy will recede by roughly 30% over the coming years (classified by economists as “catastrophic collapse”)

• It will turn out that trade was “fake and gay” all along and autarky is the way to go, despite centuries of historic lessons to the contrary.

Take your pick.

Holy shit the post-market drops for SPY and QQQ are insane. I haven’t seen a post/pre market move this sharp since Covid

Me, checking what the damage is: oh good, my European defence stocks went up 2 to 4 percent today while the American stocks are tanking, happy days!

Me, after thinking on it a bit longer: oh God, my European defence stocks went up while the world economy is taking a hit, better get ready for whatever’s coming