- The formula used to calculate President Donald Trump’s new batch of tariffs announced Wednesday is based on dividing the U.S.’s trade deficit with a given country divided by their total exports to the U.S. A memo from the office of the U.S. trade representative acknowledged this was the methodology used because it was too “complex, if not impossible” to calculate the full extent of each country’s U.S. trade policies.
The Trump administration implemented widespread reciprocal tariffs on countries all over the world Wednesday in an effort to fight back against what it said were unfair trade practices that hurt American businesses and the economy at large.
