Donald Trump the Megathread part II - Mod Warning added to OP 10/1/26

You can’t help but think a separate Pharma tax is on its way - likely awaiting the EU response first.

The figures in terms of what % countries are taxing America are a nonsense -doesn’t matter though- that chart was done for a home audience and they lapped it up.

Watched a fair bit of his speech last night, can anyone quickly either confirm or deny what he stated early in it all?

Do all these countries really hit the US with tariffs on a lot of their goods, which is meant to discourage their population from buying US made items?

The real interesting thing is this is the formula chat GPT apparently spits out if you ask it something along the lines of how to calculate and impose reciprocal tarriffs with another country…..

https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1jq56pb/the_white_house_may_have_used_ai_to_generate/?share_id=syl2nXjqwGkrcmC38-1jI

Saw this and it seems to encapsulate the general view after last night's speech....

Well firstly those numbers on that chart are made up, that is the trade surplus divided by deficit, which has nothing to do with tariffs, the rest of the world does not have tariffs on the US to anything close to that degree if at all.

Secondly Trump considers EU VAT a tariff, EU VAT is applied to every product regardless of country of origin and yes that includes EU countries, do you believe American goods and only American should be exempt from EU VAT?

I assume this 20% tarrif is on everything exported to the US? I sell items around €25 and my biggest market is the states. Does the buyer pay this via customs or how does it work?

The tariff calculation based on the deficits don't take into account population sizes, which makes them even worse.

Lesotho spend more per capita on US goods than Americans spend per capita on Lesotho goods. But they get hit with a 50% tariff because some Americans spend some money importing from there. The total is is less than $250 million.

Completely and utterly insane arithmetic being used when the US has a big population, is the richest in the world, and consumes more than any other country. Pretty much any smaller or poorer country will always have a surplus because American consumers and companies can buy from those places easily when those places can't afford American goods.

If a university student did this calculation for new tariffs in an assignment worth 2% of their grade, they'd rightly be called lazy and inept. Here the US wrecking havoc in every corner of the world based on arbitrary meaningless numbers.

SSo The figures were kinda true then?

Thank you for this. What's the max price for small value exemption?

$800. I certainly wouldn't call it small value!

Assuming what ever you sell isn't actually Chinese origin, there should be no issue.

Thanks for this. Nope all Irish made. Appreciate your help on this. Just very hard to find info on this today for the small businesses. Thanks again.

He didn't bother factoring in sales tax in the US I see.