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#Trump's tariff formula confounds the world, punishes the #poor
Ridiculed for trade #tariffs on frozen islands largely inhabited by penguins, Trump's formula for levies has a serious side: it is hitting some of the world's poorest nations hardest.
The math is simple: take #US goods #trade deficit w/a country, divide it by that country's exports to the US & turn it into a percentage; cut that figure in half to produce the US "reciprocal" tariff, w/a floor of 10%.
https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-tariff-formula-confounds-world-punishes-poor-2025-04-03/
That's how the volcanic Australian territory of #HeardIsland & #McDonaldIslands in the #Antarctic ended up with a 10% tariff. The #penguins got off lightly, you might say.
But #Madagascar - one of the poorest nations in the world w/GDP per capita of just over $500 - meanwhile faces a 47% tariff on the modest $733M of exports of vanilla, metals & apparel that it did with the US last year.
"Presumably no one is buying Teslas there," John Denton, head of the International Chamber of Commerce (#ICC), told Reuters, an ironic reference to the improbability of #Madagascar being able to placate #Trump by buying upmarket US products.
Madagascar is not alone: the bluntness of the formula as applied to economies which cannot afford to import much from the US inevitably leads to a high reciprocal tally: 50% for #Lesotho in Southern #Africa, 49% for #Cambodia in Southeast #Asia.
@Nonilex
The cruelty is the point. Our country is being run by a bunch of sadistic Nazis.
@Nonilex
Madagascar vanilla is the best.
And a few of the online markets offer ethically sourced beans.
That the orange cockwomble is doing this to Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, is performative cruelty, and just shows his total lack of humanity. (Just another sin among his sea of a million.)