His Minister of Foreign Affairs told Reuters last month that the country, which has one of the highest HIV/AIDS infection rates in the world, already felt the impact of aid cuts since their health sector had depended on them.
“The biggest losers are Africa and Southeast Asia,” Denton said, adding that the measure “runs the risk of further damaging the development prospects of countries that already face terms of trade.”
But the formula is also sowing confusion among rich countries. For the European Union, a 20% punitive rate has produced, four times 5% that the World Trade Organization calculates as the EU average rate rate.
“Then, at least for us, it is a colossal inaccuracy,” said Stefano Berni, general manager of the consortium that represents the manufacturers of the specialized cheese of Grana Padano in Italy.
“It costs us three more times today to enter the US.
When asked about his methodology, the White House Secretary, Kush Desai, published in X that “we literally calculate the barriers of rates and non -tariffs” and we include a screenshot of a white house document that places the algebra behind the formula.
When asked in CNBC how the Formula, the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, did not explain it directly, but said that commercial representative economists of the United States had worked for years in a metric that reflected all commercial barriers established by a certain country.
But economists around the world rushed to point out that the terms were canceled with each other in such a way that it could be reduced to a simple commercial deficit ratio of goods on trade exports of goods.
“There is really no methodology there,” said Mary Lovely, a senior member of the Peterson Institute. “It’s like finding that it has cancer and finding the medication is based on its weight divided by its age. The word ‘reciprocal’ is deeply misleading.”
Robert Kahn, managing director of Global Macro For Eurasia Group Consultancy, agreed that it produced “many of these types of meaningless numbers that are not material.”
“Send a signal … that we are withdrawing from our relationships and alliances with them and is a cold shower for many of our traditional allies,” he told Reuters.
Others pointed out that he also raised questions about the widely sustained opinion that Trump is launching an opening gambit in what will be individual discussions with individual countries that will finally see the new rates of the United States.
“The United States has chosen a methodology that is essentially mechanical,” said Stephen Adams, a former European commercial advisor who now works for Global Counsel Consultancy.
“A practical question that raises is whether there is any scope to negotiate this … the United States has not identified any specific measure that can be changed to convince the president to change his mind.”
