Trump's "trade barriers" figures are actually the proportion of trade deficit to imports into the USA [View all]

(with a minimum of 10% for countries with little deficit, or a traded surplus, ie USA exports more to them than imports).

Link to tweet

"Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.

So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is."

This really seems to be true. eg

"U.S. goods imports from Lesotho in 2024 were $237.3 million, up 4.7 percent ($10.6 million) from 2023. The U.S. goods trade deficit with Lesotho was $234.5 million in 2024"
234.5/237.3 is 99% - the Lesotho figure (no country goes higher than 99%, because a trade deficit can't be bigger than the total of imports). Or take a country at random - Serbia.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-trade-deficit-by-country

deficit: $542.8 million; imports: $734.6 million. Ratio: 74%. And that's figure given for Serbia: https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-reciprocal-tariff-will-be-for-each-country-trump-trade-11708072

They have just taken a number for each country's deficit, lied about it being "tariffs charged to the U.S.A. including Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers", put a minimum of 10% (because for some countries, it would be a negative number otherwise), and said "we'll charge half that, with a minimum of 10%".

This is literally the biggest economic bullshit any country has ever attempted.

(Hat-tip to the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog who pointed out the tweet: https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/04/liberation-day-2