What's even more hilarious is that...we're putting reciprocal tariffs in place. Meaning, all these other outfits are charging us and arm and a leg for US goods while insisting they get free access to our market.

It's a bit more complicated than that.

For example, if you look at the chart that explains the various tariffs, the European Union is listed as having "Tariffs charged to the U.S.A." of 39%. Except, however, that the EU does not charge a tariff of 39% on goods from the U.S. - it charges an average tariff of about 5.2%. Which is where the fine print comes in - Trump's chart calculates tariffs as "including currency manipulation and trade barriers."

Europe isn't charging us an arm and a leg for U.S. goods. Their tariffs are a few percentage points higher than ours, but nowhere near the 20% "reciprocal" tariff Trump is charging. It's all in the "currency manipulation and trade barriers" column, which I suppose is Trump deciding that we're allowed to charge sales taxes but the Europeans aren't.

The same is true of most of the "Tariffs" in his chart. Japan has among the lowest tariffs in the entire world at 4.2%, but the Administration lists it as 46%. India imposes an average tariff of 17%, but the Administration lists it as 52%. Taiwan's at 6.4%, but they're listed at 46%. Etc.

So this isn't really about equalizing actual tariff rates. The Administration wanted to charge a very high tariff on imported goods, and has come up with some derived figure that has no relationship to actual tariffs in order to convince people who don't dig into it that this is reciprocation.

nationalreview.com - Trump has a point about other countries tariffs on our goods
thehill.com - Wp content