If they were region based, or in ascending or descending row of GDP or tariff rate, or any type of order would have been better. I can’t understand what motivated these groupings
Wait until you get to the French overseas collectivities and departments. Like collectivities (French Polynesia, St Pierre & Miquelon) as separate entries make sense to a degree. But overseas departments (Reunion, Mayotte, French Guiana) are like metropolitan France, they are even part of the EU Single Market and EU Customs Union. Why do they need separate rates?
EDIT: Also I can't find New Caledonia & Wallis and Futuna on the list, so now there are parts of France that are exempt?
Christmas Island is part of Australia too, right? And has a population of like 1,600 people so I'm pretty sure they don't play too big of a role in "damaging" the U.S. economy.
Seems like they just went through a list of every location with their own ISO 3166 code without considering that many of them aren't actually countries
Svalbard is honestly one of the less weird examples, as there is a ton of weird Svalbard-specific law since Norwegian ownership of the islands is based on a treaty where the rest of the world promises to agree that Norway owns it in exchange for Norway not being allowed to act like we own it.
There's also separate tariffs for some French overseas departments, which, legally speaking, are just regular French departments that happen to be far away.
The Svalbard Treaty pretty heavily restricts the Norwegian governments ability to regulate commerce there (also anyone can go there without a visa), so I guess there's lower trade barriers than for mainland Norway.
Since there's only a 5% tariff difference, it probably won't make financial sense for the Norwegian government to take the very funny step of spending the money necessary to build up a port capable of routing all Norwegian exports to the US through Svalbard (plus, no shot the port expansion would be be done before the tariffs are reversed).
Yeah these people are so ideologically driven they've disconnected from reality. The Trump admin could have just coasted off of Biden's economy, but instead we have to get our stupid culture war victory. Will go down as one of the stupidest decisions by an American president.
Will go down as one of the stupidest decisions by an American president.
Never in the history of human civilization have so many people given up so much for so little. These people voted ruined the economy, our reputation, our legal system, our civil liberties, our environment, our education system, our health system, our social nets, and our kids' futures and for what? To keep a dozen trans people from playing sports? Because they are mad a black guy was president? This might be the greatest collective stupid humanity has ever seen.
yea a lot of people (in all cultures, but particularly in the US) seem to be more interested in blocking “others”
from opportunity than having opportunity themselves
Can't every ship from mainland France (or even the EU) make a 1 minute stop at Martinique to get the 10% tariffs? Some of our oversea territories have specific laws, but I don't understand how our Departements d'Outre-Mer can be listed separately (especially those closest to the US).
Thankfully not, Trump hasn't discovered that services exist yet. He has only ever cared about or discussed goods tariffs. Trade in services is magically exempt from any policy consideration at all, for no reason at all.
Convicted Felon Donald Trump can't even bring himself to follow trade agreements he personally signed like USMCA. WTO rules mean less than nothing to this man.
When the Taiwan tariff left his mouth I bought a 9950x3d I do not care right now, and I snagged a 9070xt the minute they came out, so got a good deal on that.
Anyways what a braindead moron. Milton Friedman just twitched in his grave.
I spent a couple of minutes trying to see if I was missing it. And then I thought “Boy, can’t wait to hear the justification for that if anyone bothers to ask.”
Why are they applying a separate 37% rate for Reunion from the rest of France and the European Union?
Reunion is part of EU customs territory, part of the single market, it's fully part of France, the only difference is they have a low-rate VAT
edit:
Same situation with French Guiana & Mayotte, but those are 10%. Like France has 3 different tariff rates and we're not even talking about French Polynesia and Saint Pierre & Miquelon which are at least overseas collectivities with more autonomy
edit 2: Meanwhile I can't find New Caledonia on the list, so I guess now we have parts of France that are exempt? what even is this list
Lots of weird stuff in this. Switzerland has lower VAT than all EU countries (not that this would be in any way relevant), lower tariffs and a stronger currency. So I am not really sure why it should be treated worse?
I think the trade deficit is relatively high, since they’re small and don’t import a ton of American stuff but do export a solid amount of luxury goods (and I think pharmaceuticals as well?)
And, you know, Trump takes it very personally whenever an American wants to buy a watch but a Swiss person doesn’t want to then buy $5000 of Doritos.
Uff problem is you are expecting some sense, which you shouldn’t. It really is easier to understand if you know Trump views the world on a level of a Cartoon Network show. Here educate yourself:
SNB buys USD with CHF so idiot investors stop shooting up CHF in the bathroom whenever there’s a hurricane in Cambodia
Trump thinks this is specifically targeted at Americans and says Switzerland is a (I quote) “currency manipulator”. Currency manipulation = tarrifs
We have high agricultural tariffs and a strong currency so I assume that's why we have a higher tariff. It's incredibly dumb because we abolished industrial tariffs in 2024 and mainly export expensive high value added products (medical equipment and industrial machinery I believe).
This is the most important part. Obviously we can't trust the numbers. It's important to not even try to argue about those numbers because they're literally made up.
We can't be like "Look, China only did 20% tariffs on XYZ, but the RMB is X% lower than USD but their standard of living is also X% and shipping is expensive. The math doesn't work!"
I finally got the answer I was looking for on when tariffs go on. Apparently they are saying there is room for negotiations on reciprocal tariffs in the next week, hopefully some of those tariffs go down.
The baseline 10% tariff will go into effect at 12:01 a.m. on April 5, while the reciprocal rates will become effective at 12:01 a.m. on April 9.
I'm sure this admin has the capacity to adequately and competently negotiate with all the countries on this list and reach a more productive compromise in a single week, instead of just angrily smashing everything to pieces and somehow calling it a win anyway.
Yeaaaaa people need to stop treating this administration like it is anywhere near able to navigate situations rationally or competently.
He selected members of his administration exclusively based on loyalty. No experience and they are terrified to tell him no. We're in an American version of the cultural revolution. Expect chaos and incompetence
They calculated "Tariffs" as being the trade deficit as a percent of imports from the US. It's not a real "reciporical tariff" it's based on Trump's moronic idea that trade deficits are tariffs.
" Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is."
The only reasons I can think of is that Vietnam having the 3rd largest trade deficit, and all of them seem kinda close to China (Vietnam is trying to Balance but idk how Trump thinks)
Clearly the 1,600 people living on Christmas Island are much more of a threat than Russia who has actually been threatening us with nuclear war every month.
I thought they just didn't include sanctioned countries, but Iran and Venezuela are on the list, even though Cuba is not (before anyone asks the US does import food and medicine from Cuba).
Yeah the apparent 10% floor for seemingly the entire planet is interesting. My best guess is that's a half-assed "approximation" of the effective impact of the US dollar gaining value on most foreign currencies for the past X years. I.e. "sure Australia didn't tariff the US but it's 10% more expensive for Australians to buy US-made goods because USD/AUD got 10% more expensive so we have to impose a 10% tariff on Australia to be fair."
Apparently they are coming up with the "tariff" other countries impose on us by taking the trade deficit and dividing it by the country's exports to the US.
And then any other country that doesn't have a large deficit we just make up the number 10%
He wanted to impose a 10% general tariff, but it's supposedly reciprocal, so they had to claim all the countries that don't impose any tariffs just happened to converge at 10%.
I love that the response to Trump 1.0 tariffs on China was that so much manufacturing left China for Vietnam to escape tariffs...only for Vietnam to end up with higher tariffs than China.
Makes sense, stop them from all the polar bear industrial policy they've been doing and dumping onto the American market. We should be breeding polar bears at home on American soil and protecting polar bear farmers.
And don't even get me started on the snow. America should be sourcing 100% of its snow from Alaska, not this shitty Svalbard imported stuff.
Where did they get the tariffs charged to the USA numbers, because that sure as hell isn't the actual tariff rate.
EDIT: Holy crap, I figured it out and it is way sillier than you could possibly have imagined. It isn't based off of tariffs, currency manipulation, or anything. It is purely the following:
"Tariffs" charged to US = round_down((imports - exports) / imports))
That's it. A handful of countries below. All numbers in billions.
Yep, I calculated the trade deficit with Kazakhstan the moment this idiocy was announced, and it came in at 54%. Half of that 27%. Ffs, most of what we export to the U.S. are oil and other commodity related items. We are a landlocked country. What the fuck does he expect us to do with imports?
Just saw that the weighted average of the new U.S. tariffs will be 29% it seems.
If you think that's not that high... it was 1.5% before. The new ones will be equivalent to Brazilian tariffs in 1989 before opening the economy (31%, data from World Bank).
Now, Brazilian tariffs by weighted average, is 7%, and it's... super high for today standards.
Argentina also have a similar tariff (because of Mercosul).
China, have 2.2%...
The United States will be an autarchy, similar to how LaTam was in the 70's. I also can't imagine how awful will be the recession because this will kill the consumption, which is what drives the U.S economy. Let alone the other effects...
Didn't Israel eliminate their tariffs on US goods a while back precisely because of Trump's threatened "reciprocal tariff" program? And now they're getting slapped with a 17% tariff anyway? Eh?
You can’t negotiate with Trump because he doesn’t uphold his side of the deal. His art of the deal involves scamming people and avoiding punishment from the legal system.
In the world of business you can always find new suckers who you haven’t fleeced before personally. In the world of geopolitics, countries stick around and reputations stick around.
North Korea, Russia, and Belarus went unmentioned on the tariff sheets
You couldn’t make this shit up. These countries “coincidentally” didn’t make it on the list, but random overseas territories and uninhabited islands did.
Every country only "tariffing" the US 10-19% should immediately up their tariff to 20%. Seems like if you are at 20% you get 10% and if you are at 10% you get 10%. No savings for having lower tariffs.
Very kind of him to list countries by the size of America's trade relationship with them so everyone can see how fucked they are on only the first page
As an Australian, I was confused how they got 10% as the average tariff on the US. After all, Australia has almost no tariffs in general (average total is like 2%) and virtually none on any US goods.
Then I realised. They’re counting bloody GST as a tariff ☠️
Fuck Norfolk Island in Particular. Those indoor temperature tolerant pine trees have been competing unfairly with patriotic American pine trees for too long
For smoot-hawley, there was at least a method to their madness. Tariffs were a well established policy tool and they at least understood that tariffs lead to higher prices.
Now we have the Trump administration restablishing wide ranging tariffs, ending the post war consensus that free trade (with many exceptions) was generally a good thing. All to fufil this fan fiction that not having tariffs was basically giving away free money.
942
u/AffectionateSink9445 4d ago
We can all agree the worst part is this not being in alphabetical order right