US President Donald Trump sent shockwaves across the world on Wednesday as he announced sweeping reciprocal tariffs against nearly all imports from 185 nations. The White House has since released details of the formula used to calculate its raft of new levies — ranging from 10% to a whopping 49%.
Trump claimed on Wednesday that several countries including India charged the US exorbitant levies — up to 99% in some cases — as he announced a barrage of ‘discounted’ reciprocal tariffs. Critics have since claimed that these rates were “made-up numbers” — prompting a clarification from White House officials that they had “literally calculated tariff and non tariff barriers”.
The Trump administration later outlined a formula that divides the trade surplus of each country with the US by its total exports — using the US Census Bureau data for 2024. This number was subsequently divided by two in order to produce the ‘discounted’ rate. Bloomberg also calculated the tariffs for China on the basis of this formula to arrive at the stipulated percentage.
The publication noted that the country had a trade surplus of $295 billion with the US last year on total exports of $438 billion — creating a ratio of 68%. This was then divided by two to arrive at the tariff rate of 34% that was announced by Trump. The same calculations roughly produced the rates for other economies like Japan, South Korea and the European Union.
What were the numbers for India?
According to the figures outlined by the President, India charges the US 54% tariff. He consequently announced a levy of 26% before changing the number slightly to 27% in a later update.
Data available with the Office of the US Trade Representative indicates that US total goods trade with India was an estimated $129.2 billion in 2024. The country also has a trade deficit of $46 billion with India.
“US goods exports to India in 2024 were $41.8 billion, up 3.4% ($1.4 billion) from 2023. US goods imports from India totaled $87.4 billion in 2024, up 4.5% ($3.7 billion) from 2023. The US goods trade deficit with India was $45.7 billion in 2024, a 5.4% increase ($2.4 billion) over 2023,” the website adds.