A major mystery of the Trump tariff crusade: The “Liberation Day” “reciprocal” duties he’s threatening are completely disconnected from what other nations are charging the U.S. on our exports. In virtually all cases, Trump’s tariffs are multiple times larger. How does he justify this giant gulf? The president claims we’re getting “ripped off” not by excessive tariffs but blatant “non-tariff barriers” (NTBs), such as quotas and technical standards that systematically block our goods from foreign markets, while we naively open America to the “cheaters” who lock us out.
In reality, Trump’s got it backwards: The U.S. is a far more avid user of the NTBs he finds so offensive than all but a handful of the world’s major economies.
