By Evelyn Lucado
Incoming Editor-in-Chief
Following the Trump administration’s April 2 announcement of reciprocal tariffs, President Trump’s defenders claim he is playing chess while the rest of the global economy is playing checkers. In reality, President Trump has no clue what game he is playing.
His trade policy is not a masterstroke of genius but more of a haphazard scramble built upon flawed math, misinformation, and political posturing.
There are valid arguments for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States. As America has grown more reliant on trade, many working class Americans felt left behind as manufacturing jobs were sourced elsewhere.
However, bringing manufacturing back to America is not as simple as signing an executive order. Factories are not built overnight, nor do supply chains magically reappear because of a tariff hike. Rebuilding a sustainable manufacturing infrastructure will take years, if not decades.
President Trump’s rhetoric surrounding reciprocal tariffs assumes a simplified “us-versus-them” mentality regarding international trade.
“I think it’s the idea about the term is that there is the sense that they wanted to have imposed higher tariffs on countries from whom we buy more stuff than we sell to, and I think that’s basically the idea of what they did,” Co-Chair of the Washington College Department of Economics Dr. Adalbert Mayer said. “Reciprocal seems to imply that the reason for that difference in exports and imports is a tariff imposed by these other countries, which is not true in most cases.”
Alongside his announcement of “reciprocal” tariffs, President Trump presented a chart that claimed to break down existing tariffs other nations imposed on the United States.
However, according to FactCheck.org, experts agree that the Trump administration’s methods of calculation are inaccurate and not based in real economics.
“The Trump administration’s calculations are a fundamentally nonsensical way to calculate ‘reciprocal’ tariffs,” Vice President of Federal Tax Policy with Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy Erica York said. “Absolutely none of the factors the White House purports to be looking at, like tariffs, non-tariff barriers, or other unfair practices, factor into the tariff rate they calculate in any way. They are invented numbers that have zero relationship to real policies.”
According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Trump administration’s reciprocal tariffs are calculated for the purpose of balancing bilateral trade deficits between the United States and our trade partners. However, for better or worse, the United States economy is reliant on trade.
“We have really specialized professions and production processes…some of us [have] different talents, some countries have different natural environments that we can exploit,” Dr. Mayer said. “So it makes sense that bananas are growing in Colombia and we grow potatoes, because the weather is just different.”
Despite the Trump administration’s claims that other nations are responsible for paying the imposed tariffs, according to CNN, American businesses importing goods will be the ones actually paying, in turn raising the cost of goods for consumers.
Ultimately, the Trump administration’s implication of these reciprocal tariffs do not allow the necessary time for positive change to take place. Isolating the United States and antagonizing our trade partners does nothing to help the American economy
“Just imagine you don’t trade. You make everything yourselves, you make your own shoes, you make your own glasses, you treat your own dental issues, you build your own house. It would be a nightmare,” Dr. Mayer said.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Photo Caption: President Trump’s so called reciprocal tariffs are not based in real economics and hold the potential to do harm.