Trump's tariffs send shivers across world markets as economists warn of recession risk
apnews.com
The U.S. president's move has provoked dismay and calls for further negotiations to make trade rules fairer.

Among the reciprocal tariff levels Trump announced:

China: 34%

European Union: 20%

South Korea: 25%

India: 26%

Vietnam: 46%

Taiwan: 32%

Japan: 24%

Thailand: 36%

Switzerland: 31%

Indonesia: 32%

Malaysia: 24%

Cambodia: 49%

United Kingdom: 10%

Rest of the world: 10%

  • houseofleft@slrpnk.netEnglish
    781·
    2 days ago

    In case anyones looking at this and asking question like “Why has Cambodia been dunked with 49% when they’re clearly not a competitor to the US” or “Why is Trump claiming that the European Union has a 40% tariff on the US when the actual mean tariff on US goods into the EU is less than 5%”, here’s your answer to how these figures have been calculated.

    • Take the US trade deficit with a given country (eg. China is $292bn)
    • Take the total good imported by US (for China that’s $439bn)
    • Divide the first figure by the second! Why? Who knows! It’s a number! Less talk more first grade arithmetic (if you’re still following that gives us 67%)
    • That gives us a random number which we’ll pretend is that country’s tariff of US goods even though it’s completely unrelated in every way. We’ll divide it by two to get the new tariff rate for imports from that country. Why? Honestly if you’re still expecting there to be an answer to that question I’m wondering if you’ve been following. (that gives us 34%, well actually it gives us 33.5% but I’m not sure the Trump administration understands the idea of fractions so we’ll just round it up from there)

    The “reason” behind this is that Trump seems to think trade deficits are really bad, which is bad news for the US because it’s had a trade deficit for the last 50 years. We’ll ignore the fact that based on GDP it’s been the wealthiest country in the world for that time though.

    Anyway, just to give everyone an idea of how completely, utterly unrelated to anything meaningful that figure is, let’s take Cambodia. The country is very poor compared to the US so can’t afford to buy anything that the US manufacters (Cambodians aren’t driving round in Teslas or IMessaging each other). Some US companies use it for clothing manufacture because labour is cheap in Cambodia (see the previous bit about Cambodia being much poorer than the US). This means that Cambodia imports close to nothing from the US compared to what it exports, giving it a close to 100% trade deficit, so we wind up with a 49% tariff on Cambodia.

    I genuinely don’t understand the mindset that looks at the US’s explotation of cheap labour in Cambodia and interprets the US as the victim in that relationship, but hey-ho maybe I’m just not biggly-smart enough to understand the 4d chess moves at play here. . .

    Reference (because unfortunately none of what I said was made up and that geniunely is the calculation): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/03/trumps-idiotic-and-flawed-tariff-calculations-stun-economists

    Edit: After making fun of Trump for not understanding the enconomy, I went and conflated per capita GDP with GDP. Doh! Now corrected.

  • FortyTwo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    331·
    2 days ago

    Me, checking what the damage is: oh good, my European defence stocks went up 2 to 4 percent today while the American stocks are tanking, happy days!

    Me, after thinking on it a bit longer: oh God, my European defence stocks went up while the world economy is taking a hit, better get ready for whatever’s coming

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.eeEnglish
    1122·
    3 days ago

    Ironically crashing the economy is one of the best things you can do to slow down climate change

    • LuckyPierre@lemm.eeEnglish
      167·
      3 days ago

      I think you’re reading too much into that.

      They’re either under “Rest of world” like the EU, or the US doesn’t import anything from it, which as it’s under sanctions, it shouldn’t - nor export to.

  • superglue@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    30·
    2 days ago

    Been browsing the conservative subreddit this morning just to see what they all are thinking. There is a surprising number of “This is a terrible idea” comments but its also funny seeing a whole bunch of republicans who now suddenly like higher taxes, inflation and stock crashes.

  • OldWoodFrame@lemm.eeEnglish
    36·
    2 days ago

    I don’t have a ton of “the court is wrong” opinions, but Article 1 section 8 of the Constitution flatly gives Congress the responsibility of regulating trade and imposing tariffs. The President just doesn’t (shouldn’t) have the authority to change rates. The executive needs to execute the will of the Legislative branch.

  • elatedCatfish@lemm.eeEnglish
    20·
    2 days ago

    Trump clearly has some feelings about Vietnam. He used his “bone spurs” excuse to avoid being sent over there back in the day. Lmao

    What a pussy

  • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.worldEnglish
    462·
    2 days ago

    Did you happen to notice the one country not on the list?

    Here I’ll give you a hint it’s name starts with an “R” and is run by a man who’s name starts with a “P” and is currently at war with a country that starts with a “U”…

  • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2302·
    3 days ago

    “our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, plundered”

    by other nations selling their goods to us cheaply, and by them accepting our Dollars that cost us nothing to make for it!!

    I don’t think Trump understands the benefits and privileges for USA of having the top international reserve currency.
    But maybe if he ruins it quick enough, he may find out?

    Play stupid games and win stupid prices.

    • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.eeEnglish
      506·
      3 days ago

      Play stupid games and win stupid prices.

      He is playing Vlad Putin 8D Chess, not Donald Trump 1D Checkers. https://lemmy.world/post/27627662/16165977 This was all planned in 2013.

      Introduction to the Kremlin media techniques of year 2014

      1. Peter Pomerantsev September 9, 2014: Russia and the Menace of Unreality. How Vladimir Putin is revolutionizing information warfare

      2. Adam Curtis, BBC, December 31, 2014: On The “Contradictory Vaudeville” Of Post-Modern Politics - “What this film is going to suggest is that that defeatist response has become a central part of a new system of political control. And to understand how this is happening, you have to look to Russia, to a man called Vladislav Surkov, who is a hero of our time. Surkov is one of President Putin’s advisers, and has helped him maintain his power for 15 years, but he has done it in a very new way.”

      3. Book reading from December 5, 2014 on the subject by Peter Pomerantsev

      • selokichtli@lemmy.mlEnglish
        13·
        3 days ago

        Own your president Trump. Even if your theory was true, and I won’t qualify it, nothing of this could have been possible without a ruined education system and mindless propaganda. All of this starts way before 2013.

        • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          Own your president Trump.

          People need to own up to anonymous no-identity social media addiction. The egomania they get chasing junk (drugs) off of Apple iPhone / iPad / Samsung / machine devices. Donald Trump is entirely an Apple iPhone addict in egomania off machine lust, as too is Elon Musk.

          nothing of this could have been possible without a ruined education system and mindless propaganda.

          Nothing is more mindless than the education people get off of Lemmy memes, Reddit memes, Bluesky memes, Fox News HDTV, Joe Rogan. That’s the education that creates an audience for Donald Trump. Self-centered eoomania, like the Middle East gets with one religion vs. another religion. Fiction addiction problems are raging in USA.

          Even if your theory was true

          My theory:

          “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” ― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, 1985 !BackTo1985@lemm.ee

        • guldukat@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          I’d argue it started with Bush and his No Child Left Behind bullshit. It forced a certain curriculum to leave out common sense and critical thinking skills

          • RoundSparrow @ .ee@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            2 days ago

            I’d argue it started with Bush and his No Child Left Behind bullshit. It forced a certain curriculum to leave out common sense and critical thinking skills

            Children aren’t the problem. it’s adults who get their constant education off anonymous memes. The year 2007 introduction of the Apple iPhone changed everything about USA society. We had the Fox News Rupert Murdoch problem since 1996, but the shit memes people flock to and “shit postings” addiction are the learning / education / study problem.

            Shitpostinh education is very predictable adult education outcome. Cal Sagan predicted in in 1995: “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding (from 1995) of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, year 1995

            • selokichtli@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              It’s like the USA won the Cold War and found themselves with nowhere left to go, exhausted. The state became less relevant by the year as it was intended by their neoliberalism, and greed is always everywhere taking over as many spaces as possible, it’s just its nature. But an ever disappearing government is just a milking cow, why it even exist if it’s been taken by the greedy? In this scenario, instead of being hopeful about its mere existence, because it should be one way for the people to regain power, it is just another way to take more wealth from the people, and an instrument to control them.

              My point was that Trump, Trump-Putin, are just a consequence. The USA government showed critical weaknesses and they are being exploited. At the same time, you point it out well, the government found weaknesses of society to exploit. Americans should exploit them too, usually it’s done politically, but both of the American parties are basically the same (I know politically involved individuals do hate this statement, but from outside of the USA it’s very clear); it’s time for the people to regain power, and they will, this tariffs craze is gonna make them have to fight back.

    • barneypiccolo@lemm.eeEnglish
      19·
      3 days ago

      One of my main rules of life is that people are most suspicious of the behavior they are most likely to perform. Cheaters think they’re being cheated on, thieves think everybody is stealing from them. If HitlerPig thinks everyone else is looting, pillaging, raping, and plundering, its because that what he does.

    • Wanpieserino@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Buying from other economies does two things. One, you have access to their expertise/efficiency.

      Not everyone will have invested in the same industry.

      Will miss out on cheap labour. Cheap resources.

      Don’t be dumb though, selling us USD for our products isn’t just “printing paper”. We use those USD (mostly we sell the debt to china) to buy USA companies. It’s capitalism after all.