Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Breccia]

Absolute fucking clownshow

Hi. Professional mathematician here. This formula is fucking stupid.

Let me start off by saying that, just because I don't recognize a formula, doesn't mean it's never used. Duh. But I work closely with the biology, chemistry, physics and, yes, business schools here, since my math classes are prereqs for them. And I haven't seen this.

But it turns out, not only had nobody else, but that was by design. Basically every news source has said the same thing: all Trump did was find a percentage. Trade gap / imports -> % tariffs. Dividing by two might be one of those denominator variables, but since it was 2 for everyone, why make it a variable, and what's the other one doing? And the 10% minimum isn't shown.

The use more than two variables, Greek letters no less, to express that is like calculationg the distance between each knuckle and the next when pressing 1 to cast Arcane Missiles in Vanilla.



That annotated formula comes from Axios. So is this description:

The official formula for calculating the "reciprocal" tariffs on countries, as published by the U.S. Trade Representative, is much less complicated than it looks at first glance.

The word "reciprocal" notwithstanding, there's nothing in the formula that represents tariffs or any other trade barriers imposed on U.S. exports.

That's despite the White House insisting that "we literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers."

Once you fight your way through the thicket of Greek letters, the formula is really very simple.

To quote Reuters:

Asked about its methodology, White House Deputy Press Secretary Kush Desai posted on X that "we literally calculated tariff and non-tariff barriers" and included a screenshot of a White House paper setting out the algebra behind the formula.

Asked on CNBC how the Trump administration came up with the formula, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did not directly explain it but said United States Trade Representative (USTR) economists had worked for years on a metric that reflected all trade barriers set up by a given country.

But economists across the world rushed to point out that the terms cancelled each other out in such a way that it could be reduced to a simple quotient of goods trade deficit over goods trade exports.

"There is really no methodology there," said Mary Lovely, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute. "It is like finding you have cancer and finding the medication is based on your weight divided by your age. The word 'reciprocal' is deeply misleading."

Robert Kahn, managing director, global macro for Eurasia Group consultancy, agreed that it produced "a lot of these kind of nonsense numbers that aren't material".

"It sends a signal ... that we are pulling back from our relationships and alliances with them and is a cold shower to a lot of our traditional allies," he told Reuters.

To quote the NYTimes:

James Surowiecki, a financial writer and book author, first pointed out the trend in a post on X. His comment set off widespread speculation, given that Mr. Trump previously said each nation’s tariff rate would be “the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers and other forms of cheating.”

Those non-monetary barriers include a host of hard-to-quantify laws and other policies that Mr. Trump sees as the primary reason that the U.S. experiences such trade imbalances in the first place. (There are exceptions: Some nations face only a standard 10 percent minimum tariff starting this month.)

In an earlier briefing with reporters, White House officials said the figures were calculated by the Council of Economic Advisers using well-established methodologies. The official added the model was based on the concept that the trade deficit that we have with any given country is the sum of all the unfair trade practices and “cheating” that country has done.

The White House later clarified its methodology in this post. Though it uses some mathematical symbols that might be hard to parse, it confirms that the formula is essentially based on the U.S. trade deficit with a foreign country, divided by the country’s exports.

“It was always going to be a really difficult exercise to come up with a very precise reciprocal tariff rate,” said Emily Kilcrease, the director of the Energy, Economics and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security and a former deputy assistant U.S. trade representative.

“Given what seems to be their desire to get something out quickly, it appears what they’ve done is come up with an approximation that is consistent with their policy goals,” she said.

"Cheating" of course being an abstract term that (a) could be used to justify anything due to its unspecified nature, and (b) was apparently not even used at all.

And let's look at (as one article I read today said) Madagascar, which exports $750 million, mostly vanilla. They can't afford to import $750 million. They cannot afford to close the trade gap, and also, are not "cheating" by raising crops and selling them. That's just business. To the best of my knowledge, Madagascar does not impose a stiff tariff on US imports, as the average salary of a Madagascar citizen is about $500 a year.

Bear in mind, tariffs were put on countries with whom we have a surplus. These are not "reciprocal". They are not driven by the other countries' governments. They are based on the American consumers wanting goods from those countries, and the more we want them, the harsher the penalty. Trump is lying.

Oh, and Trump left out services. Why? The US is a net exporter of services. Basically, Trump watched as the US took in a $20 meal, traded it for a $20 oil change, then complained that the meal was $20 and demanded his money back.

All Trump does is lie. Lying by holding up a sign with Greek letters, pointing to it, and saying "we did the math!" changes nothing.

[Sunseeker]

God I cant fucking stand the media, the Dow dropped 4% today, along with all the other markets seeing similar dramatic losses, and the market has done nothing but go down since Trump took office, and the headlines still read:
"Gosh, I hope Trump was right."
Or
"Heres how Trumps tarrifs could affect your money"
Or
"Look at the clever way Trump calculated the tariff amounts"

Hell, fox news just turned off their stock ticker.

If this were a Democrat theyd skip straight past impeachment and right to public beheading.

[Breccia]

"surely nobody knows math well enough to decode our very poor attempt at looking smart"

Convenient timing. Literally everyone who can read that formula, knows it was bullshit. Its only purpose was to do exactly what you said: show they are pretending.

- - - Updated - - -

Hell, fox news just turned off their stock ticker.

No problem, FOX News, I gotcha.



Taking a point for that *ding* even though I'm not the one citing FOX News.

[hellhamster]

The math teacher told us in grade school that every multiplication by 1 is wrong math, or that using zeros when it's not necessary is also wrong math.

I guess they didn't finish grade school?

[Nymrohd]

I mean there is nothing wrong with the formula, all the work goes in calculating the coefficients and they . . .skipped that.

[Breccia]

I mean there is nothing wrong with the formula

Professionally and respectfully disagree. @thilicen is right, they used an overly complex formula on purpose to make it look like it was more involved than it was. They showed the formula for QB rating when they were just looking for the score of the game. Using something with multiple extra unused variables, just to have extra unused variables, is wrong.

[Edge-]

Professionally and respectfully disagree. @thilicen is right, they used an overly complex formula on purpose to make it look like it was more involved than it was. They showed the formula for QB rating when they were just looking for the score of the game. Using something with multiple extra unused variables, just to have extra unused variables, is wrong.

it's the same thing everyone has been saying all along:

donald and his crew are the idiots idea of a smart person

[hellhamster]

I mean there is nothing wrong with the formula, all the work goes in calculating the coefficients and they . . .skipped that.

Yeah there is. In math, you have to be absolute with what you write down, any unnecessary extra symbols, numbers or coefficients are wrong.

It's like buying apples and counting them like this:

1*1+1*1+1*1 apple=3 apples total instead of going 1+1+1=3.

You can write that with the first method, but it would be wrong.

It's like writing 1/4=0.25000 instead of 0.25. Unnecessary numbers are just wrong.

Edit: I get where you're going, but if a coefficient is 1 at all times, then remove it because it's wrong.

[Nymrohd]

Professionally and respectfully disagree. @thilicen is right, they used an overly complex formula on purpose to make it look like it was more involved than it was. They showed the formula for QB rating when they were just looking for the score of the game. Using something with multiple extra unused variables, just to have extra unused variables, is wrong.

Sure. But the main issue for me remains that they did not do the actual work. These coefficients do have meaning (they aren't variables), they just failed to produce them.

[Doomcookie]

Forgot idiot voters, I would lump their intelligence alongside anyone who would describe Harris this way. A lackluster, indecisive candidate that could barely get through four sentences with an intact campaign message, and couldn’t articulate what she would do differently than a deeply unpopular candidate that just dropped out. Her approach to deeply unpopular culture war issues was to go radio silent on them, and send an anonymous campaign staffer speaking on background to tell reporters she no longer thought a certain way.

She lost that election with a terrible campaign. If you want to rate yourself above a dumb Trump voter contingent, then start talking sense yourself. There were two godawful candidates in that race, and then you can make valid points to how tariffs comprised the objectively worse campaign message on the economy. I don’t understand why you try to get away with all these fictions if you don’t want to count yourself among as equal to the Trump crowd.

Would you describe Trump supporters as "idiot voters?"

You did vote for him, despite trying to lie yourself out of it.

[Nymrohd]

Edit: I get where you're going, but if a coefficient is 1 at all times, then remove it because it's wrong.

It is NOT 1 at all times. But it is really hard to calculate properly so . . . just put 1 because . . . who knows? It's like, you need to calculate how non-tariff barriers affect trade. If you assume there should never be non-tariff barriers which is an inane assumption that I could see Trump ACTUALLY making since he demands free trade for US exports with no limitations, I think 1 would make sense? Ofc this also doesn't account for quota schedules.

[Doomcookie]

You’re trying to make a point about moral culpability. I talked about his post’s point on Trump voters and contrasting it with his description of Trump’s opponent. You can both partially identify issues with Trump’s voters knowledge of economics, and then show beliefs in lies and ignorance of candidates to lower yourself into their camp. Intelligence-wise. Which is fine if you yield that you’re as dumb as a certain segment of Trump voters, just in other ways.

You are morally and financially culpable.

Let me know if you disagree.

[SAY HER NAME]

I mean there is nothing wrong with the formula, all the work goes in calculating the coefficients and they . . .skipped that.

Nah the coefficient calculation makes sense and they actually cite papers to justify them. The formula is just bad on principle on the fact that it describes the wrong things and achieves the wrong objectives.

The coefficients obviously have inverse values since they describe inversely correlated things. So when you multiply them it equals to 1.

The issue here is that the formula is two fold,

1. Its bad in that it doesnt describe reality. If Madagascar runs a trade surplus with the US is it bc of tariffs or is it bc they are too poor to afford US goods and services? Using trade deficit as an indicator of tariffs is just bad.

2. Its unnecessarily complicated. There is no need to use greek letters for the formula, this is not physics. You want to explain your reasoning in a formula that can be understood. The use of greek letters only obfuscates that. The use of unnecessary coefficients too. Imagine that I give you a formula that in both ends has a +1 and -1 respectively. This is stupid. You simplify for the final result.

[hellhamster]

It is NOT 1 at all times. But it is really hard to calculate properly so . . . just put 1 because . . . who knows?

I came to the same conclusion earlier in this thread because I saw yesterday some countries on that board having 90% tariffs on the US which didn't make sense. So I double checked with twitter to get some numbers, and they also all came to the same conclusion that all the Trump administration did is basically put 1 at the coefficient that was important. That formula became tariff=trade deficit/imports/2.

It's completely idiotic on principle. The only way a country doesn't receive huge tariffs is by having 0 trade surplus with the US, which is simply not possible unless countries are spending hundreds of billions importing stuff from the US.

[D Luniz]

So lets see the list.
You have over 100 thousand people (at least) unemployed from the government purge.
The student loan borrowers that will now be paying their loans again instead of consuming.
And now the inflation costs from the tariffs.
Im surprised the GDP shrink estimates and the market's reactions are as low as they are.

[Kaleredar]

What’s their excuse gonna be when their super fancy formula that is totally so smart and cool… just leads to everything being vastly more expensive for your average every-day consumer? “Don’t worry, the formula is doing math! You just don’t understand its mathness!” really doesn’t mean jack shit when prices keep going up.

Like the part where they fucked up in all of this bullshit is that this is rather directly going to affect people and what they see that they’re paying every single day.

They’re not “passing tax cuts with this super complicated formula” that really just gives the tax cuts to the rich and not to anyone else and then sort of just passively and slowly drives up the cost of everything over a few years so nobody really notices it was directly caused by it, as is the typical Republican M.O.

They’re basically saying “look at this cool t-shirt I bought you that says ‘bulletproof’ in Latin, now watch this!” and then pulling out a gun and pointing it at you saying “why are you afraid? You obviously just don’t speak Latin!” before pulling the trigger.

[Edge-]

What’s their excuse gonna be when their super fancy formula that is totally so smart and cool… just leads to everything being vastly more expensive for your average every-day consumer? “Don’t worry, the formula is doing math! You just don’t understand its mathness!” really doesn’t mean jack shit when prices keep going up.

Like the part where they fucked up in all of this bullshit is that this is rather directly going to affect people and what they see that they’re paying every single day.

They’re not “passing tax cuts with this super complicated formula” that really just gives the tax cuts to the rich and not to anyone else and then sort of just passively and slowly drives up the cost of everything over a few years so nobody really notices it was directly caused by it, as is the typical Republican M.O.

They’re basically saying “look at this cool t-shirt I bought you that says ‘bulletproof’ in Latin, now watch this!” and then pulling out a gun and pointing it at you saying “why are you afraid? You obviously just don’t speak Latin!” before pulling the trigger.

(((globalists)))

[Nymrohd]

Nah the coefficient calculation makes sense and they actually cite papers to justify them. The formula is just bad on principle on the fact that it describes the wrong things and achieves the wrong objectives.

The coefficients obviously have inverse values since they describe inversely correlated things. So when you multiply them it equals to 1.

The issue here is that the formula is two fold,

1. Its bad in that it doesnt describe reality. If Madagascar runs a trade surplus with the US is it bc of tariffs or is it bc they are too poor to afford US goods and services? Using trade deficit as an indicator of tariffs is just bad.

2. Its unnecessarily complicated. There is no need to use greek letters for the formula, this is not physics. You want to explain your reasoning in a formula that can be understood. The use of greek letters only obfuscates that. The use of unnecessary coefficients too. Imagine that I give you a formula that in both ends has a +1 and -1 respectively. This is stupid. You simplify for the final result.

It absolutely is a horrid way to communicate this to the public. I am not saying it's not. But I would expect it to be formatted this way in a textbook (yes even with the index, it shows the formula is applicable to a set of values). As for the Greek lettering, the Δ has to be there, it is universally used for in this manner. The coefficients you can name whatever (there is usually a reason why a coefficient is named with a particular letter if you dig enough).

[Kaleredar]

(((globalists)))

And again, I’m sure your average trumpist will eat that up… but how’s that gonna play against your average American when the democrats come around saying “everyone is paying more than ever before, we’re reversing this stupid tariff bullshit, kick this moron out of the White House and his stooges out of Congress.”

And here’s the thing about reversing tariffs… they actually very much could bring prices down, because suddenly the markets become flooded with cheaper previously tariffed goods.

[Nymrohd]

(((globalists)))

I now imagine the girl in your avatar with the "ancient aliens" guy's hair.