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James Surowiecki Profile picture
@JamesSurowiecki
Apr 2 • 4 tweets • 1 min read • Read on X
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.
Even given that it's Trump, I cannot believe they said "We'll just divide the trade deficit by imports and tell people that's the tariff rate." And then they decided to set our tariffs by just cutting that totally made-up rate in half! This is so dumb and deceptive.
How in God's name did Scott Bessent agree to sign off on this?
This tweet is correct, but it's actually worse than I thought: in calculating the tariff rate, Trump's people only used the trade deficit in goods. So even though we run a trade surplus in services with the world, those exports don't count as far as Trump is concerned.

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More from @JamesSurowiecki

James Surowiecki Profile picture
Jul 25
Unsurprisingly, the Financial Times is reporting that Japan does not agree with Lutnick's description of the deal - and that there is no written agreement for the $550 billion. Lutnick has been saying taxpayers will get 90% of the profits from these factories - Japan says profits will be “based on the degree of contribution and risk taken by each party.” If the US contributes nothing, it gets no profits.Image
What Japan is describing is a model where the Japanese govt provides financing for investments in American infrastructure, but where the assets would only be owned by the US if the US invests money itself. That's miles away from a "blank check."
It's frustrating that we have no real idea of what this deal involves. But that's not surprising, given that the FT says "the deal was pulled together in a slapdash manner during a 70-minute meeting between Japan’s chief negotiator Ryosei Akazawa and Trump."
ft.com/content/c1183b…
Read 4 tweets
James Surowiecki Profile picture
Apr 17
J. Harvie Wilkinson (a conservative judge) gets it right: Trump's argument that the govt can dump people in foreign prisons and keep them there with no due process "should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans...still hold dear." Image
Wilkinson also properly rejects the administration's argument that the Supreme Court said only that the govt needed to accept Garcia back if Bukele returned him: "“Facilitate” is an active verb. It requires that steps be taken, as the Supreme Court has made perfectly clear."
Wilkinson's ruling only denies the govt's request for a stay while it appeals the district judge's most recent order. But it's important as a crisp and sharp dissection of the flimsiness of the govt's arguments, and a rejection of its gameplaying.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
Read 4 tweets
James Surowiecki Profile picture
Apr 10
This was my expectation all along. But a universal tariff is blatantly unconstitutional. There's no argument that our trade with, say, Australia (with whom we have a surplus) constitutes an emergency, and Trump has followed none of the legal procedures required to impose tariffs on a country under other laws.
Trump has no constitutional authority to impose any tariffs. And he has no statutory authority to impose a universal tariff on the world. This is exactly the kind of thing the Constitution requires Congress to pass into law.
It's a travesty that US businesses and consumers are now required to pay a 10% tax that's been imposed by Trump in clear violation of congressional statute. Both Congress and the courts should stop sitting by and letting it happen.
Read 4 tweets
James Surowiecki Profile picture
Apr 4
For once in his life, Lutnick is right - if factories come back to the U.S., they will be highly automated and will create relatively few good-paying jobs. Which means lots of people will be disappointed.
On the one hand, MAGA keeps saying we're re-shoring manufacturing to bring back good-paying, dignified jobs to the heartland. On the other hand, Lutnick is saying (correctly, for once) that robots are going to be doing most of those jobs. So why are we doing it?
It's not obvious why a waitress in America should have to pay significantly more for sneakers so that they can be made in a factory in the U.S. employing 200 robots and 12 people, rather than one employing 500 people in Vietnam.
Read 4 tweets
James Surowiecki Profile picture
Apr 1
Trump's lawyers are arguing that because they've dumped this guy in a Salvadoran prison, he can't file a habeas corpus petition, because he's no longer in American custody. They're arguing that once you get to sent to El Salvador, no court can order the govt to bring you back. Image
The administration's lawyers are inadvertently explaining why it's illegal for the govt to deport people to El Salvador without a hearing: if the govt can't be forced to bring someone back if they've been sent erroneously, you have to make sure people aren't sent erroneously.
Trump's lawyers are straight out of Catch-22: in one case, they're saying judges can't interfere with the deportation flights because the proper remedy is a habeas petition, but they're also arguing that once someone's been deported, they can't file a habeas petition. Horrible.
Read 5 tweets
James Surowiecki Profile picture
Feb 18
This is absurd, corrosive nonsense. There are not tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security checks, and the only reason Leavitt is out here making these hysterical claims is because Elon Musk misunderstood a table of numbers.(1/n) Image
Social Security checks go to five groups of people: retired workers, their dependents, survivors of retired workers who have died, disabled workers, and their dependents. We know how many people in each of these groups get checks.
The biggest group, obviously, is retired workers - this is what we think of as classic Social Security. In Dec. 2024, 51.8 million American workers aged 62+ got SS retirement benefits. That's out of a population of more than 60 million Americans who are 62+.
Read 8 tweets

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