Did Trump Take the Tariff Formula From ChaptGPT?
Not only is the 'reciprocal tariff formula' equation not reciprocal, it appears to have been taken from ChatGPT.
The brain trust running Trump’s trade policy has unleashed widespread ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on countries all over the world on Wednesday. Branded ‘liberation day’, the White House claimed it was an effort to fight back against so-called unfair trade practices harming the United States.
Glancing at the ‘reciprocal’ tariff formula they utilised to unleash this global economic shock, it is not as complex as first appears. Let me explain: not only does it not account for non-U.S. countries tariffs on U.S. goods, it appears to have been taken from ChatGPT (no, really, see my video attached below).
The White House had been insisting that “we literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers”, however when we examine the formula it is clear that there is nothing representing tariffs or any other trade barriers imposed on U.S. exports.
Furthermore, in a memo Fortune received from the United States Trade Representative (USTR), this formula was utilised because it would be “too complex, if not impossible” for them to actually calculate the full scale of each country’s U.S. trade policies.
Put simply, the USTR has confessed the chosen formula is categorically not about reciprocating any existing tariffs. Instead, it is merely placing the biggest tariffs on countries running the biggest trade surpluses. In other words, it is not a reciprocal tariff response to other countries tariffs on the U.S.
Given my MSc in Development Studies—focusing on the economics of developing countries—the risible simplicity of this calculation piqued my curiosity. Not least because Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and others either misrepresented or fundamentally misunderstood what this formula actually does. So, I asked ChatGPT: ‘Can you tell me the best way to calculate a tariff on another country to bring the balance to zero?
Guess what I discovered?
Dean M Thomson is currently a lecturer with Beijing Normal - Baptist University (BNBU), formerly known as Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, United International College (UIC).
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If you read my op-ed The Tariff Gambit, you already know I called out the so-called “reciprocal tariff” math as spreadsheet nationalism — blunt, lazy, and dangerous. Turns out, I was being generous.
This week on CNN’s OutFront, host Erin Burnett interviewed economist Brant Neiman — a former Treasury official under Biden whose research the Trump White House (via Peter Navarro) supposedly used to justify their global tariff rollout. Neiman’s reaction? Shock.
“This was a terrible policy… a cascade of mistakes.”
Navarro and Trump took Neiman’s narrow, academic model — one designed to analyze specific product categories in bilateral trade — and applied it universally across every trading partner. Then they got the math wrong on top of that. Trump claimed a 46% tariff on Japan was justified based on Neiman’s formula. The actual number? Closer to 12%. If you follow Trump’s own “cut it in half” logic, that would’ve made it 6%.
Neiman doesn’t even know where they got the 0.25 number they plugged in:
“My research would have used 0.95… the number they used made the tariff nearly four times higher.”
This wasn’t policy. It was improvisation disguised as analysis.
This wasn’t strategy. It was malpractice with a podium.
As Neiman noted:
“Markets are moving tremendously… this is an unbelievably consequential policy… and the methodology was two pages long.”
Two pages long.
To justify tariffs that could trigger trade wars