Jeremy Horpedahl
Jeremy Horpedahl and Phillip W. Magness
While the Trump administration had already rolled out tariff increases against our largest trading partners—Canada, Mexico, and China—several weeks ago (and then delayed some of them), we finally got a picture of President Trump’s big tariff plans on April 2. And those plans are worse than most economists probably imagined.
At his announcement of the tariffs, Trump pulled out a printed table of data, showing the supposed tariff rates that countries were charging the US, as well as the supposed “reciprocal” tariffs that the US was imposing (generally half of what they claimed was being charged against the US). In Trump’s telling, the new rates aim to offset the tariff and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) that each country allegedly imposes against American goods.
At the White House, staff are passing out charts that outline what the US will be charging each country in reciprocal tariffs during Trump’s “Liberation Day” announce in the Rose Garden pic.twitter.com/G5uc0XA9Ws— Jasmine Wright (@JasJWright) April 2, 2025
Despite the president’s rhetoric about “reciprocity,” the White House’s numbers immediately didn’t add up. While the US and EU don’t have a free trade agreement, there is no way the average tariff rate the EU charges the US is 39 percent. And for South Korea, who we do have a free trade agreement with, Trump’s chart claimed they are charging us a 50 percent tariff rate. In fact, many of the countries that Trump singled out for “reciprocal” tariffs score above the United States on conventional measures of trade freedom.
The White House chart did say that the figures include “currency manipulation and trade barriers,” and initially it seemed there was some sophisticated formula being used to calculate the rates. Not so. As several users on X/Twitter quickly figured out, and the White House later confirmed, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/trumps-tariffs-arent-reciprocal-are-massive-tax-increase-americans