How did Donald Trump’s tariffs pay?

US President Donald Trump has introduced a 10% tariff for most goods imported to the United States, with even higher rates for what he calls “the worst offenders”.

But how exactly these tariffs – in essence, import taxes – is it? BBC Verify considered the calculations behind the numbers.

When Trump presented a giant cardboard schedule, which details the tariffs in the White House garden, initially assumed that the allegations were based on the combination of existing tariffs and other trade barriers (such as rules).

But later the White House published what could look like a complex mathematical formula.

But the actual exercise is to simple mathematics: take a trade deficit for the US in goods with a particular country, share it by the total import of goods from this country, and then divide that amount into two.

Trade deficit occurs when the country buys (importing) more physical products from other countries than sells (exports).

For example, the United States buy more goods in China than they sell them – the product deficit is $ 295 billion. The total amount of goods it buys from China is $ 440 billion.

Acting 295 by 440, you get up to 67%and you divide it into two and round. Therefore, the tariff imposed on China is 34%.

Similarly, when it was applied to the EU, the White House formula led to 20% tariffs.

Many commentators point out that these tariffs are not mutual.

Mutual will mean that they were based on which countries already charge the US in the form of existing tariffs, as well as non -tariff barriers (things such as rules that increase costs).

But the official document of the White House methodology makes it clear that they have not calculated it for all the countries on which they have imposed tariffs.

Instead, the tariff rate was calculated on the basis that it eliminates the shortage of trade in US goods with each country.

Trump broke away from the formula in tariffs for countries that buy more goods from the United States than they sell.

For example, the United States does not currently manage the deficit of goods with the UK. However, the UK suffered with 10% tariff.

In total, more than 100 countries are covered by a new tariff regime.

Trump believes the US is getting a bad business in world trade. According to him, other countries are poured by US markets with cheap goods – which harms US companies and costs jobs. At the same time, these countries complicate the barriers that make us products less competitive abroad.

Thus, using tariffs to eliminate trade deficit, Trump hopes to revive US production and protect jobs.

But will this new tariff mode be able to achieve the desired result?

BBC Verify talked to a number of economists. The predominant opinion is that while tariffs can reduce goods between the US and individual countries, they will not reduce the overall deficit between the US and the rest of the world.

“Yes, it will reduce the bilateral trade deficit between the US and these countries. But there will obviously there will be many broader consequences that are not enthusiastic,” says Professor Jonathan Portes with King College, London.

All because the existing general deficit is due exclusively by trade barriers, and how the US economy works.

For one, Americans spend and put more than earning, and this gap means that the US is buying more in the world than sold. As long as this continues, the US can continue to work with the shortage, despite the increase in tariffs with its global trading partners.

Some trade deficits can also exist for a number of legitimate reasons – not only for tariffs. For example, buying food that is easier or cheaper to produce in the climate of other countries.

Thomas Sampson from the London School of Economics said: “The Formula is a return engineering for the rationalization of tariffs for charging in countries with which there is a trade deficit in the US. There is no economic justification for this, and it will cost the world economy.”