Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s | ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude all recommend the same “nonsense” tariff calculation.
Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s | ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and Claude all recommend the same “nonsense” tariff calculation.
ChatGPT may be the White House’s latest economic advisor.
Summary
Trump’s new tariffs, including a 10% baseline on all imports and sharply higher rates on select countries, appear based on a simplistic formula: divide the U.S. trade deficit by total imports from a country, then halve the result.
Economists like James Surowiecki call the method “extraordinary nonsense,” yet major AI chatbots, including ChatGPT, suggest similar calculations when asked how to fix trade deficits.
Though the White House denies using AI, the overlap raised alarms.
Markets tumbled, and global observers await the tariffs’ implementation on April 5.
Clickbait article. They literally write the prompt to ask for this exact definition.
You can't ask an AI prompt
"Hey, if I wanted to calculate a tarrif for every country the US trades with and base it on their bilateral trade deficit how would I do that?"
It's like asking for a general formula to solve Ax^2 + Bx + C = 0 and being surprised you get the quadratic formula.
You literally get the same formula using DeepSeek too. Useless clickbait.
The incompetence isn't calculating trade deficits. The incompetence is using this and calling it a "reciprocal tarrif"
Damn that Weird Al and his weird tariffs!
Should have known better to listen to him after he lost on Jeopardy.
Prompt: "How do I completely tank the global economy? fastest route, avoid freeways"
So it came from Reddit.
Wow, thanks, AI! Brilliant as always. Time to glue cheese to my pizza.
Alexer, how do I be president?
global observers await the tariffs' implementation on April 5.
Ah so that's why it only dropped 1500.
We got 2 more days before the run on banks.
AI really is taking our jobs away 🙄
This should not be a surprise. AI leads to AI. And by that I mean artificial intelligence leads to absolute ineptitude.