Trump's Controversial Tariff Plan: Suspicions of AI-Generated Formula Arise

Did Trump Use ChatGPT to Determine Disastrous New Tariffs?

Social media users have noted that there appears to be no logic behind the tariffs. Following President Trump's announcement of sweeping global tariffs on Wednesday, users on social media were quick to try and decipher the math behind the tariffs. On top of a baseline 10% tariff against the entire world, individual countries will face additional tariffs based on how "unfairly" Trump believes they are treating the U.S. It turns out, however, that the White House may have used rudimentary suggestions from a chatbot to come to its calculations. From The Verge: Economist James Surowiecki quickly reverse-engineered a possible explanation for the tariff pricing. He found you could recreate each of the White House’s numbers by simply taking a given country’s trade deficit with the US and dividing it by their total exports to the US. Halve that number, and you get a ready-to-use “discounted reciprocal tariff.†The White House objected to this claim and published the formula it says that it used, but as Politico points out, the formula looks like a dressed-up version of Surowiecki’s method. Asking various chatbots for a "simple" way to rectify trade imbalances with other countries, The Verge found that they all suggested a formula that aligns closely with the one used by The White House. That should not be terribly surprising to anyone who understands the fundamentals of chatbots. They are imitating what they frequently see posted online. The trick to understanding chatbots is to preface anything they say with, "I have heard a lot of people are saying that..." But in the same way that you would not trust a survey of fifty people who do not know anything about a subject, you should not trust what a chatbot says either. They confidently say things that are wrong or confounding all the time. Although the administration has denied using a basic chatbot over experienced economists, it has already gotten itself into hot water over its penchant for using consumer apps. It just went through a scandal for prolifically using the consumer app Signal to discuss confidential war plans, a move that seems likely to have been influenced by Elon Musk, who is known for using Signal. And his DOGE cost-cutting initiative has been forthright in its plans to use AI across the federal government in order to cut costs. Further supporting the idea that the White House haphazardly put together its tariff strategy is the fact that there are territories on the list that are uninhabited, like Heard Island. And other countries being hit with tariffs, like Australia, in fact, have a surplus with the United States, meaning they buy more from the United States than they export. You have to wonder if they even read the tariff list before sharing it. There are perfectly good reasons why a country might have a trade deficit with another. The United States is a service economyâ€"it does the lucrative work of designing products, developing software, managing supply chains, and other work while outsourcing the physically laborious work to other nations. The U.S. has a trade surplus in services as countries use many American services, from Facebook to Netflix. Every country has what economists call a comparative advantage, something they do well that other countries do not. Americans, put simply, do not want to do the grunt work, so the country imports a lot of goods from countries that will do it. Somehow, the president expects factories are suddenly going to come roaring back, and deporting migrants will not make lettuce more expensive.

Has the Trump administration used AI to calculate tariffs?

Hey ChatGPT, summarize this book for me. Credit: Chip Somodevilla / GettyImages With all of the world talking about Trump's tariffs -- you know, the set of levies on basically the entire world that's set to wreak havoc in the global trade and make your iPhone more expensive -- an important question looms: Has the Trump administration used an AI to calculate those tariffs? It would be unheard of. Trump's "Reciprocal Tariffs" table -- while certainly not definitive at this point -- could turn out to be the most important document of the decade. But the numbers on the table indicate tomfoolery. Without going into intricacies of tariffs for every specific country, the thing is, these tariffs aren't reciprocal, despite Trump calling them so. It appears that the White House used a pretty basic formula that divides the trade deficit for the U.S. for a country, then divides that by the total imports from that country, and then divides the result in two. Note that there are no actual tariffs in that formula; a country could be charging a tariff on U.S. imports, but this formula disregards it (the White House countered this by basically providing more proof that this was exactly the case, per finance writer James Surowiecki). This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Then there's the question of the countries and territories included, which include places where there are no people (which is why the internet is today flooded by penguin memes). Tech artist Gordon Chapman then dropped a bombshell on Threads, indicating that the White House's tariff table corresponds to internet top level domains (instead of, you know, actual countries), which could be proof that it was generated by an AI. Chapman later withdrew the post, explaining that the tariffs table is likely based on this data. Still, the question remains: How much (human) thought went into the tariffs calculations if the entire thing is just a simple formula applied onto a list of territories which doesn't entirely correspond to places that the U.S. should reasonably be imposing tariffs upon? According to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, United States Trade Representative (USTR) economists had worked on this stuff for years. Some experts, per Reuters, dismiss this as they consider the tariffs to have "no methodology" that produced "nonsense numbers." Interestingly, if you ask an LLM, such as ChatGPT, to calculate U.S. tariffs on other countries in an "easy way," you get pretty much the same formula that the White House used. Ouch. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. The tariffs figures can be viewed as starting point for further negotiations. In fact, Eric Trump said it pretty bluntly on X: "I wouldn't want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump. The first to negotiate will win - the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life...," he wrote. So maybe the math behind the numbers is less important, if the numbers are all going to change soon. But if the tariffs calculations have been hastily put together by an AI, that would indicate a new depth of incompetence for the Trump administration, closely following that of using Signal chat to plan military operations and including a journalist in that same chat. It's hard to prove that the White House used ChatGPT or an equivalent for its tariffs math. The AIs themselves give a fair share of warnings that their calculations are imperfect and simplified, which should give pause to...anyone, really. The signs are out there, though, and we shudder to think what else the White House experts may leave to AI to do.

Trump Tariffs Show Signs of Being Written by AI

President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs on most goods imported into the US yesterday, affecting over 100 countries -- including uninhabited territories in the middle of the ocean. It's a baffling decision that's expected to wreak havoc on the international economy, heightening existing concerns over an imminent recession. Worse, as Cointelegraph reports, there seem to be signs that the befuddling measures were cooked up by an AI chatbot. Basically, Trump's tariff rates divide the trade deficit between the US and a given country by the value of the total goods imported from it, and then divide the result by two. As observers quickly noticed, chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT were prone to duplicating that calculation, suggesting that lethargic administration officials might have turned to the tech to devise the plan. "What would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even playing fields when it comes to trade deficit. Set a minimum of ten percent," crypto trader Jordan "Cobie" Fish asked ChatGPT. The AI tool happily obliged, coming up with a strikingly similar formulation, dividing the trade deficit by total imports to calculate the tariff rate. However, even the chatbot warned that doing so wouldn't make much sense. "This method ignores the intricate dynamics of international trade -- such as elasticities, retaliatory measures, and supply chain nuances -- but it provides a blunt, proportional rule to 'level the playing field,'" ChatGPT wrote. "Confirmed, ChatGPT..." Journal of Public Economics editor Wojtek Kopczuk tweeted. "Exactly what the dumbest kid in the class would do, without edits." A breakdown of which country got hit hard and which was spared highlights how the new tariff rates largely ignore the greater international trade context. "I suspect his is also why countries like Iran, which we basically do not trade with, gets off so easily," another user replied. "No trade = no trade deficit!" It's not just ChatGPT. Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok gave a similar answer when given the same prompt, suggesting adjusting tariff rates "based on deficit size." Again, Grok warned about such a plan being largely illogical -- and potentially self-defeating. "This method assumes tariffs directly reduce imports by raising prices, but in reality, factors like demand elasticity, currency exchange rates, and global supply chains complicate the outcome," Grok wrote. "It also risks retaliation or higher costs for US consumers." "For a truly 'even playing field,' you'd need to consider production costs, subsidies, and labor standards abroad -- data that's harder to quantify simply," the chatbot added. Anthropic's Claude AI chatbot made a similar suggestion, adding the same caveats. Could the pattern be a coincidence? Sure. But the White House has already been accused of using AI to generate sloppily-written executive orders, which bore hallmarks of AI tools like ChatGPT. The administration has also made a big deal of its use of AI for governing, with Elon Musk's DOGE crowing about its use of the tech and the General Services Administration launching a chatbot last month designed to support staff at the agency. The bottom line, though? AI or not, economists are warning that the tariffs are ill-advised and likely to devastate the global economy. The stock market is already taking a hammering this morning. "There is no economic rationale for doing this and it will cost the global economy dearly," London School of Economics professor Thomas Sampson told the BBC.

'Vibe Governing': Trump's Tariff Formula Eerily Similar to ChatGPT Suggestions, Experts Say - Decrypt

Donald Trump's administration unveiled a controversial new tariff plan that economists quickly identified as relying on an overly simplistic and probably unrealistic formula: trade deficit divided by imports. Wednesday's tariff announcement included a 10% baseline tariff on nearly all imports and imposed significantly higher rates for specific countries. When explaining the country-specific rates, Trump claimed they reflected "tariffs charged to the USA" by trading partners, showing figures like 39% for the European Union, 49% to Cambodia and 10% to the Heard and McDonald Islands -- an Australian territory which, notably, is entirely inhabited by penguins On social media, the approach was quickly lambasted as being economically unsound. But soon, X pundits and journalists alike speculated that the White House must have consulted AI chatbots rather than economists to determine its trade policy. Indeed, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok all suggested the same approach as the White House-dividing the trade deficit by imports. We verified it on ChatGPT and came up with the same result: Claude went a bit further and even added an "adjustment factor" -- basically the 0.5x that Trump arbitrarily chose to show he was being "lenient." Some users asked different chatbots if this was actually a screw-up. In one of the most viral interactions, Grok replied mentioning that apparently, the guys at the White House didn't actually know how to apply the formula ChatGPT provided. "The Trump administration's team did screw up the tariff rate calculation by using a formula meant to calculate the change in tariffs to justify the actual tariff rates they claimed other countries were charging. This led to a misrepresentation of foreign tariffs and the imposition of U.S. tariffs that don't truly reciprocate anything, as they're based on trade deficits rather than actual tariff barriers," it replied to a query on X. "The error stems from both a misuse of the formula and a broader misunderstanding of trade economics." That said, AI enthusiasts had their fair share of fun among the chaos. Tech commentator Rohit Krishnan called this "the first large-scale application of AI technology to geopolitics," suggesting the White House might have simply prompted an AI system for a quick solution. Others went a step further, saying the Trump administration vibe coded a formula for tariffs, with this being the first instance of "vibe governing" in the history of humankind. If you don't know the reference, you can read all about vibe coding here -- but it basically means asking an AI chatbot to do something for you (in this case, coding) without you knowing what's going on, not supervising it, and not caring about the consequences. You just vibe with it. But to vibe govern, you also need experts, otherwise you get bad results -- like this unnecessarily complex and unrealistic equation. Maybe all they needed was better prompt engineers.

Did ChatGPT come up with Trump's tariff rate formula?

Leading AI chatbots ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok all return the same formula for reciprocal tariff calculations, several X users claim. There's a crazy theory on social media that US President Donald Trump's newly announced reciprocal tariff plan -- which hits all countries with a minimum 10% tariff -- could have been designed by an artificial intelligence chatbot. Only a short period after Trump announced the tariffs at the White House Rose Garden on April 2, some X users claim they were able to duplicate the same tariff plan with a rudimentary prompt using OpenAI's ChatGPT. "I was able to duplicate it in ChatGPT," NFT collector DCinvestor told his 260,000 followers on X following the Donald Trump announcement of reciprocal tariffs on 185 countries on April 2. "It also told me that this idea hadn't been formalized anywhere before, and that it was something it came up with," he added, referring to the chatbot's ability to calculate the tariff rates. "FFS. Trump admin is using ChatGPT to determine trade policy," he added. Of course, the similarities between the artificial intelligence-generated tariff plan and Trump's plan could also be simply coincidental. DCInvestor's observation came in response to crypto trader Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie, who also asked ChatGPT using the prompt: "What would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even playing fields when it comes to trade deficit. Set a minimum of 10%." Journal of Public Economics editor Wojtek Kopczuk also experimented with ChatGPT, which generated the same results. "I think they asked ChatGPT to calculate the tariffs from other countries, which is why the tariffs make absolutely no fucking sense," he said. Author Krishnan Rohit postulated on X that this "might be the first large-scale application of AI technology to geopolitics." ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok all give the same answer to the question on how to impose tariffs easily, he observed. Founder and CEO of supply chain logistics platform Flexport, Ryan Petersen, said his firm had reverse-engineered the formula the Trump administration used to generate the reciprocal tariffs. "It's quite simple, they took the trade deficit the US has with each country and divided it by our imports from that country," An editor at The Yale Review, James Surowiecki, said something similar, "they just took our [US] trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us." Related: 'National emergency' as Trump's tariffs dent crypto prices Trump's reciprocal tariffs, which come into effect on April 5, have hit all countries with a 10% levy, with some nations facing even larger rates, such as China with a 34% tariff, Japan with 24%, and the European Union with 20%. Crypto markets reacted particularly badly, plunging 5% after the announcement as Bitcoin (BTC) fell by $5,500 to $82,277 before recovering marginally, according to CoinGecko.

Did Donald Trump use ChatGPT to create Liberation Day tariffs plan? Here's what reports state as many say AI is running the country

Claims have emerged that the Trump administration used AI chatbot ChatGPT to compute tariff rates. The tariffs, allegedly computed using a simplistic formula involving the US trade deficit and imports, sparked controversy and speculation, with political commentators and experts criticizing the method. Questions about AI's role in significant policy decisions have been raised.Social media users and experts have claimed that US president Donald Trump's administration used artificial intelligence (AI)- OpenAI's ChatGPT, to compute the tariff rates for his "Liberation Day" tariffs that he imposed on other countries, reported LA Times. The theory initially emerged to prominence when Destiny, a known political commentator, posted on X (formerly Twitter) how the Trump administration had allegedly utilized ChatGPT to come up with the tariff percentages of other countries, according to the report. Destiny, who goes by @TheOmniLiberal on X, claimed that the tariffs did not make sense and were based on a simplistic equation of dividing the US trade deficit with a country by the overall imports from that country, reported LA Times. He supported his claims by putting up screenshots of his own exchange with ChatGPT, in which he asked the AI bot to provide him with an "easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even-playing fields when it comes to trade deficit? Set minimum at 10%," quoted LA Times. ChatGPT, in its response, offered a proportional tariff formula, suggesting that nations with bigger trade deficits should pay more tariffs, as per the report. The bot claimed that the tariffs would encourage more balanced trade between America and trading nations, according to LA Times. The rumours that AI played a role in the making of tariffs gained rapid pace. Lawyer, journalist, and legal commentator John Aravosis explained on TikTok how each tariff was calculated by taking the United States trade deficit with another country and dividing it by the total imports from that country to the US, reported LA Times. Aravosis said in the TikTok video, "Guys, they're setting U.S. trade policy based on a bad ChatGPT question that got it totally wrong. That's how we're doing trade war with the world," quoted LA Times. Why are people saying Trump used ChatGPT for the tariffs? Some claim the tariff formula, which seems overly simplistic, came from a ChatGPT conversation. Who first claimed ChatGPT was used to create the tariff plan? Political commentator Destiny (@TheOmniLiberal) made the claim public by sharing screenshots of his interaction with ChatGPT.