Live updates: Trump announces sweeping tariffs
Live updates: Trump announces sweeping tariffs
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%
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.
Putin's bitch trying to further destabilize the world for daddy.
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
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.
GlObAL ReCESSioN
Can they fucking stop threatening us like we’re stupid children? Life has been getting more expensive worldwide for a decade and we all know now who is to blame.
I don’t fucking care about new toyota prices in the us, I want to buy potatoes in poland. Fuck off with your recessions and bullshit economies.
Trump announces "Things aren't expensive enough."
“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.
Thanks for typing out the percentages, so far I've only seen emotional news reports about it without any detailed info.
Are these tariffs on ALL goods from a certain country? Eg, does 34% on China mean 34% on ALL Chinese goods or just certain ones like cars?
Well, one of two things will happen now.
-
The US economy will recede by roughly 30% over the coming years (classified by economists as "catastrophic collapse")
-
It will turn out that trade was "fake and gay" all along and autarky is the way to go, despite centuries of historic lessons to the contrary.
Take your pick.
-
"The corporations own the government" made sense for a while, but Trump has done enough to hurt said corporations lately that I'm actually starting to question that idea (it's definitely true for the majority of Democrats though). The only real reason I can think of where it would make sense to do stuff like this is to cause a crisis making it easier to abuse power later on.
Why the fuck is our media so bad that they blindly accept Trump's bullshit line that the tariffs are "reciprocal"? Are they just stupid or have they been paid off? Do they not know the meaning of "reciprocal" or are they just too fucking lazy to question the White House's rhetoric even a little bit?
The state of the United States makes me sick. We're being robbed blind buy the oligarchy in broad daylight while the media gleefully amplifies the administrations lies.
This gold from wallstreetbets:
Soooo is the tariffs charged to the United States really a ratio of the trade imbalance?? For example Vietnam imported roughly 14.6 billion in goods from the United States, and we imported around 146 billion, so thus they have decided tariffs are 90% to the United States…thus we are putting a tariff on them of half of that…which means we are literally tariffing the goods we either a)need more or b) get more efficiently at a higher rate? That may be the absolute dumbest way to create a tariff policy I could imagine if that is the case…which it looks to be.
https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/1jpzhje/tariff_chart_released/ml476s7/
I think it's important to note that this will kill a great many small businesses.
Larger companies have a larger supply in giant warehouses. Small businesses order smaller quantities more often. They get fucked sooner with the costs going up. If a customer wants to support that small business they sometimes would have to pay twice what they could get it for from a larger company. This is a deep consolidation of wealth.
Russian asset undermining American interests and alliances. Can't imagine why.
I swear that if we could just all ignore him unless he does nice things, we'll make him stop. The tariffs are not his plan. That's someone else pulling the strings. He just likes the attention. Giving a malignant narcissist any kind of supply is just going to make him worse. His fans already treat him like the messiah.
Gray rock the shit out of him. Remove his name from the internet, hack Fox news - take it all down, and only give it back when he behaves like a good boy.
Did he wait until late afternoon Apr 2nd?
He failed to do it "the day l'm elected."
He failed to do it the day he was sworn in.
He failed to do it, like 5 times from Jan - Mar.
He failed to do it Apr 1.
He failed to do business during business hours Apr 2nd.
This little baby just keeps failing and hiding.
This is kind of hilarious in a dumb way. It's going to hit american consumers like a goddamn hammer, and will be rewarded with tariffs going the other way, and we'll all be poorer. Americans most of all.
If he keeps going like this you'll end up with stagflation - high inflation and a stagnating or recessive economy. That shit is hard to get out of, good luck.
Trump: Meta will invest $500 billion.
Truth: Meta will invest around $60 billion.
Thats a gross mis representation of what’s factually correct in monetary terms.
This fucking asshat is going to sink the American economy. No major company is going to do this. Why would TSMC spend “$500 billion” to build a factory?
Them just paying the tariff would be less than building a new factory. They just need to survive trumps term and frankly, when the U.S. can’t get chips at an affordable price from Taiwan, those tariffs will fall away like a pillar f sand during high tide.
Absolutely dumbest fucking turd on the planet.
And crashed the market more!
Cambodia and Vietnam are so fucked. All the Chinese companies shifting production to Vietnam and Cambodia are fucked. Damn. These are very high tariffs.
How to isolate your country:
Stop calling them reciprocal.
Oh boy. It's stagflation time
Bro just crashed the market with a printed out excel sheet.
Is he acting salty about the Vietnam war or what?
This is like watching the toughest guy in the prison who runs the biggest gang just start smashing his own head against the concrete floor
Like for brooms and shit?
Can't wait for tomorrow's sell off. Its going to be a black Friday Friday.
China: 34%
Added note that this is cumulative so it's 54% total. Confirmed by Press secretary earlier.
I was gonna get me some Cambodia and Vietnam from eBay. Now what?
Just saw a news item here in the Netherlands about a bourbon distillery in the US and the owner said that in the long term the tariffs will be good for his business. LOL these magats are delusional. I fucking hope he and his ilk become destitute. Sorry not sorry.
And our swiss right-wing populists thought Trump was better for the economy. 31% down their stupid throats
Don't buy American. Make America lose the trade war and crawl away from these tariffs
This Wikipedia page is going to be relevant to all our lives very soon.
What a dumbass
This is killing so many small businesses. I know mine is basically dead now
Look I'm a big boy doing big boy things
After hour stock trading is a fucking slaughter right now. We might see the biggest drop in history tomorrow.
Just trying to understand the Australian perspective on this. Maybe others can correct me.
He's using the term "reciprocal" as a way of saying certain practices are unfair.
For example, we refuse to import raw meat products because we don't have mad cow disease here.
We also don't have american style healthcare, so pharmaceuticals can't be advertised and are purchased exclusively through the federal government procurement scheme.
In response, he's applying a 10% tariff on any Imports from Australia. I assume this is in addition to the aluminium and iron ore tariffs but I'm not sure.
We have a federal election coming up so the opinions of both major parties are relevant. Our current progressive PM says it will hurt the US more than us, that we're not going to respond with tariffs on US products, and we do have legal recourse through our existing free trade agreement.
From here it's hard to see this as anything other than a huge self-own by the Trump Administration. We just don't export a lot of stuff to the US, our stock market has responded positively since the announcement. I would be absolutely gutted if the Australian government made any concessions what so ever, and I don't think I'm alone in that. We have our fair share of MAGA idiots down under, but even they are nationalists, with families. No one here has any interest in letting Trump fuck with our health care system just so Americans pay less in tariffs.
Imports from Cambodia: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/cambodia
and Vietnam: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/imports/vietnam
smh
Where were you when Needle drop
I was copper futures
Brother said "economy is kill"
I said "no"
Y'all better start learning Chinese
Russia?
Only ones "looting, raping, and pillaging our country" are billionaires.
Does anyone know what the top item is per country above? I guess the number is probably just a dollar weighted average as there are probably different tariffs on different goods.
Sweeping tariffs? Shit, I need a new broom
