Political Memes

The meme is referencing the official US Trade Representative's explanation^1^ of the tariffs, where yes, the math really is as stupid as it seems, but it gets worse.

The research that Trump's team used to determine that "calculation" flat out states that when the US tries to tariff other countries:

1. American importers pay for the US tariff AND
2. American exporters pay for the foreign retaliatory tariffs.

The source clearly demonstrates that American tariffs are paid directly by Americans in both directions, meaning out of everyone on Earth the tariffs screw the US the most. Trump's administration legitimized the source by citing that research for its calculations on the tariff rates.

The explanation freely admits that the stupid parameters were chosen more or less arbitrarily, and they cited the paper (Cavallo et al 2021)^2^ but conveniently didn't list it in their "References" section.

Our analyses indicate that the price incidence of US import tariffs falls largely on the United States... Our results suggest that retailers are absorbing a significant share of the increase in the cost of affected imports by earning lower profit margins on those goods... [These analyses reveal] that the recent tariffs applied by foreign governments on US exports have affected total foreign import prices far less than was the case for the recent US tariffs

~1~ ~https://web.archive.org/web/20250403013314/https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/reciprocal-tariff-calculations~

~2~ ~https://www.nber.org/papers/w26396~