from Hacker News

Trump's new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT's

by thm on 4/3/25, 5:35 PM with 27 comments

  • by throwaway81523 on 4/3/25, 6:14 PM

    Why is this post flagged? It is, at minimum, interesting.

  • by Mindless2112 on 4/3/25, 5:48 PM

    It's not "ChatGPT's tariff math" any more than it's "ChatGPT's Pythagorean theorem". ChatGPT learned it from somewhere.

  • by duxup on 4/3/25, 5:41 PM

    I think if you prompt any AI with some generic "make trade imbalance go away" type request you'll get this response. Same goes if you just roughly mathed it out yourself.

    Of course these trade numbers aren't sports game scores and just "make this different" ... anyone with a clue knows that the end results economical could be very unpredictable and potentially very much not desirable.

    It's striking that the administration explanation for all this is, to just not explain how they did anything.

  • by TomHenderson3 on 4/3/25, 5:54 PM

    I would like to understand why they seemed to use internet domains as proxies for nations.

  • by shmerl on 4/3/25, 5:44 PM

    Idiots making economy policies. What can go wrong.

  • by hdjjhhvvhga on 4/3/25, 6:30 PM

    > US tech companies are about to be used as the biggest punching bag in history by the European Union. They’ll negotiate first, for sure, because that’s what the EU likes to do, but for sure the fines and reciprocal non-tariff barriers are going to only expand for US tech firms in the very near future if the Trump admin doesn’t want to negotiate.

    For sure this will happen but there is a reason. The EU turned a blind eye on a lot of dark patterns used by the biggest players (such as lenient approach to scams that are omnipresent on Facebook, Instagram, Google platforms) and whatever these companies did they knew they might get a slap on the wrist maximum. Now that good relations are over, why would the EU tolerate this shit?

  • by r0ckarong on 4/3/25, 5:52 PM

    Extraordinary nonsense is probably the codename for all of this.

  • by howmayiannoyyou on 4/3/25, 5:41 PM

    Non-monetary tariffs are the real story here - and the tariff math accounts heavily for it.

    - Regulatory hurdles that prevent import (eg. CE requirements)

    - Currency manipulation (eg. RMB)

    - Domestic industrial subsidies (eg. export tax credits).