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'Truly amazing': Journalist slaps down White House aide's attempted fact check

Travis Gettys
April 3, 2025 6:10AM ET

A business journalist quickly slapped down an attempted fact check by a deputy White House press secretary on his revelations about president Donald Trump's tariffs.

Journalist James Surowiecki observed Wednesday evening that the president's sweeping worldwide tariffs seemed to be based on a simplistic formula, which takes the U.S. trade deficit with an individual nation and divides that number by its exports to the U.S.

"Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from," Surowiecki posted on X. "They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us. So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is."

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White House aide Kush Desia disputed that claim, citing a press release by the office of the U.S. trade representative that claims the tariff rates relied on a "basic approach," and provided a formula using Greek symbols, but Surowiecki argued that was the same formula that he had devised.

"This is truly amazing," Surowiecki posted. "The Deputy White House Press Secretary is claiming that I'm wrong, and that the 'tariff rates' on Trump's chart were calculated by 'literally' measuring every country's tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers. To prove it, he screenshots the formula the USTR says was used to calculate the reciprocal tariffs we imposed on other countries. And when you back out the Greek symbols, what is that formula? Trade deficit/imports - exactly what I said it was."

"I don't know if the Deputy Press Secretary was misinformed, or is just being misleading," he added. "Either way, the Trump administration did not 'literally calculate tariff and non tariff barriers' to determine the tariff rates it's imposing on other countries. As I said, it divided our trade deficit with a country by our imports with that country, and then multiplied by 0.5 (because Trump was being 'lenient'). Oh, and if our trade deficit/imports with a country is less than 10%, or we have a trade surplus with a country, Trump slapped a flat 10% tariff on that country."

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