'Full-on crazy': Nobel-winning economist aghast at Trump's tariffs and wildly false claims

Nobel Prize-winning economist turned political commentator Paul Krugman was completely aghast at President Donald Trump's new round of so-called "Liberation Day" tariffs, which impose new import taxes ranging from 10 to 49 percent on essentially every country's imports — and even a handful of random, remote islands with tiny populations and negligible trade with the United States.

"Based on what he said, he’s gone full-on crazy," wrote Krugman, a frequent critic of the president. "It’s not just that he appears to be imposing much higher tariffs than almost anyone expected. He’s also making false claims about our trading partners — not sure in this case whether they’re lies, because he may be truly ignorant — that will both enrage them and make it very hard to back down. Basically, he’s claiming that the rest of the world is placing very high tariffs on U.S. products, and that he’s imposing 'reciprocal' tariffs that are only half what they impose on us."

But that's not actually true, he continued, with many of the numbers in Trump's graph of countries' tariff rates complete fabrications — including the supposed 39 percent tariff the European Union places on U.S. goods.

ALSO READ: ‘I miss lynch mobs’: The secretary of retribution's followers are getting impatient

"The EU, like the United States, has generally low tariffs; the average tariff it charges on US goods is less than 3 percent," wrote Krugman. "So where does this 39 percent number come from? I have no idea. Many people speculated that Trump would count value-added taxes as tariffs, even though they aren’t — European producers selling to the EU market pay the same VAT as US producers, so it doesn’t discriminate and therefore isn’t protectionist. But even if you get that wrong, EU VAT rates are in the vicinity of 20 percent, so you still can’t get anywhere close to 39 percent."

Even when people try to correct Trump, though, Krugman said, he's certain to continue with his falsehoods.

"I don’t know how many people noticed, but he’s still claiming that we’re subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year. Aside from the basic mistake of claiming that a Canadian trade surplus means that we’re somehow subsidizing Canada, he’s inflating the actual trade surplus by a factor of three. Many, many people have pointed out the error, but Trump is sticking with it, the same way Musk is sticking with the millions of dead Social Security beneficiaries thing."

Ultimately, Krugman concluded, "If you had any hopes that Trump would step back from the brink, this announcement, between the very high tariff rates and the complete falsehoods about what other countries do, should kill them."