The approach appears to punish countries based on their trade imbalances with the U.S., rather than the taxes they impose on the U.S. and a combination of other trade barriers Trump claimed the new tariff rates would be based on.

Donald Trump and his team had said that a wide array of practices would go into their calculations of 'reciprocal' tariffs. The final calculation was much simpler.

The president is using an unintelligible equation as a way to impose higher tariffs on the countries with which the United States has the largest trade deficit