In his Rose Garden announcement of sweeping new “reciprocal tariffs,” President Donald Trump held aloft a misleading chart that claimed to give a breakdown of the tariffs other countries charge the U.S. and the corresponding tariff that the U.S. will now impose against those countries.
“Reciprocal. That means they do it to us and we do it to them,” Trump said in his April 2 speech. “Very simple. Can’t get any simpler than that.”
Trump said the U.S. would begin charging a “minimum baseline tariff of 10%” on all imported goods. But he said the U.S. would also tariff countries at a rate equal to half of tariff rates that countries charged for U.S. goods “including currency manipulation and trade barriers.” That, according to Trump’s chart, would mean tariffs of 50% on imports from some countries.
The first column next to the list of countries purported to represent “Tariffs Charged to the U.S.A.” as a percentage. A cursory look revealed, however, that the percentages are far higher than the average tariff rates published by the World Trade Organization. Smaller print under the “Tariffs Charged” heading notes — as Trump did — that the figures include “Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers.” Those last two factors are harder to quantify, but it turns out that’s not how the White House arrived at its figures anyway.
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