WSJ：
The White House’s new tariffs were pegged to amounts it said other countries impose on the U.S. In many cases, those amounts appear to match a basic formula: the size of a country’s goods-trade imbalance with the U.S., divided by how much America imports from that nation.
The chart President Trump read from in the Rose Garden listed tariffs charged on imports from the U.S. as “including currency manipulation and trade barriers.” The numbers don’t necessarily match what foreign countries charge against imports from the U.S.
For example, Chinese tariffs against the U.S. were about 23% overall as of last month, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
But dividing the U.S.’s 2024 goods-trade deficit with China, of about $295 billion, by the amount the U.S. imported from China results in the 67% tariff value presented by the White House.
$295bn ÷ $439bn=67%
The math works out that way for at least 71 of the 184 nations, plus the European Union, included in Wednesday’s announcement. In most of those cases, the U.S. is charging a new tariff of roughly half the rate it calculated.
The Journal followed calculations highlighted in postings on social media, including by journalist James Surowiecki, a former business columnist for the New Yorker.
For the remaining nations, including all those where the U.S. has a trade surplus, the tariff charged on imports from the U.S. was listed as 10%. In these instances, the U.S. set a 10% reciprocal tariff.
