'What the heck are those numbers?' Trump math leaves trade experts baffled

CNBC journalist Steve Liesman on Thursday found himself absolutely baffled by the math that President Donald Trump and his administration were using to justify the massive tariffs they slapped on nearly every nation in the world.

While discussing the tariffs, Liesman said he immediately knew something was off with Trump's presentation in the Rose Garden when he falsely claimed that the European Union charged 39 percent tariffs on American goods.

"He puts up that now-famous poster board and I'm looking at those tariffs and I'm thinking, like, wait a second, I don't know the tariffs like an encyclopedia, but I'm pretty sure the European Union tariffs aren't 39 percent, I think I know that countries like Switzerland have almost no tariffs," he began. "And I'm like, where are these numbers coming from?"

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Liesman then said he started talking to international trade experts who were similarly baffled by what Trump had presented — in fact, in Liesman's words, they told him, "What the heck are those numbers?"

Eventually, said Liesman, internet sleuths figured out that the Trump administration calculated its tariffs by taking half of other countries' trade surpluses with the United States and then dividing that number by imports.

"So then I started calling international trade economics experts, and nobody had ever heard of this formula," he revealed. "Nobody has ever used this formula. So I’m sorry, but the conclusion seems to be the president kind of made this up as he went along... I think there was an anticipation that it was going to be reciprocal. These are off the charts and nowhere near what other countries charge us."

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