Fox Business guest rails against how the Trump administration calculated tariffs: “They use this incredibly crude algorithm”
Tiana Lowe Doescher: “The biggest issue with the tariffs in my estimation is how they estimated that reciprocal amount”
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From the April 3, 2025, edition of Fox Business' Mornings with Maria
TIANA LOWE DOESCHER (WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMNIST): I think everyone understands the national security reason in the long run --
MARIA BARTIROMO (ANCHOR): Yes, Yes.
LOWE DOESCHER: -- to take an economic hit in order to decouple from China. The question is, why are we needlessly ticking off Canada. My understanding based on conversations with the White House, I hope we're all correct that this is about negotiation and that's why there's the staggered date. It did not instill confidence in me because the basis of their justification for the national emergency legally is manufacturing capacity, even though real manufacturing output, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is up 51% since NAFTA was passed.
But also, the biggest issue with the tariffs in my estimation is how they estimated that reciprocal amount, it is not actually based on what trade.gov, which is the Trump administration's official trade website. They say Vietnam only has an average effective tariff of 15% but on the tariff sheet it says 90. Taiwan 6% tariffs sheet says 32%, Switzerland only has 1.7% average tariff rate on our impor- on our exports and yet Trump claims that they tariff us 61%. And it's because they use this incredibly crude algorithm of doing the trade deficit of a given country divided by the number of imports we have from that country. That's not what a nontariff barrier should mean, it should mean things like environmental bans, carbon taxes, GMO bans and whatnot.
BARTIROMO: Well, I mean, that's the thing, people are unclear as far as how he arrived at some of these tariffs, which also opens the door in my view to some negotiation.