Reciprocity Promised. Utter Nonsense Delivered

When Trump announced his tariff plan on April 2, 2025, he pitched it as “reciprocal”—a calculated move to mirror what other nations charge us and restore balance. What we got was anything but. Instead of targeting high-tariff offenders, he slapped a blanket 10% tariff on every country, no exceptions—hitting trade partners like South Korea and Japan, whose tariffs on U.S. goods are lower than ours on theirs, thanks to existing agreements. This isn’t reciprocity; it’s a blunt-force overreach that punishes allies and competitors alike. Far from leveling the playing field, it’s American consumers and businesses taking the hit with higher costs, while our trading partners wonder why they’re caught in the fallout.

The real head-scratcher is how these tariffs were calculated—not based on actual tariff rates, but on some convoluted trade deficit formula. I expected a straightforward approach: you charge us 5%, we charge you 5%. Instead, they’re tying rates to the U.S. trade deficit, as if dividing our deficit by a country’s imports reveals anything about fairness. It’s nonsensical—using the trade deficit to set tariffs is like forecasting rain with a grocery receipt. The two don’t correlate at all. The trade deficit isn’t a country-by-country scorecard of exploitation; it’s a product of global demand, production strengths, and currency trends. Pinning it on specific nations as a justification for tariffs isn’t just misguided—it’s economically incoherent.

Worse still, Trump’s fixation on bilateral trade deficits ignores how trade actually works. We might run a deficit with one nation because we buy their cost-effective goods, while enjoying a surplus with another that purchases our high-value exports. That first country could have surpluses elsewhere, weaving a complex web of global trade flows. These bilateral figures? They’re meaningless in isolation—arbitrary snapshots, not proof of winners or losers. Building a tariff policy on them is like chasing shadows: it distorts markets, undermines comparative advantages, and delivers chaos instead of clarity. Trump promised reciprocity, but this approach—rooted in a flawed obsession with meaningless numbers—isn’t just off-target; it’s a disservice to the economic reality we live in.