If you listen to President Donald Trump and his allies discuss his radical tariff plans, a word appears a lot: “cheating”.
During his announcement on April 2 of what he called the “Liberation Day”, Trump published a list of new rates of up to 50% on almost all countries – a plan which entered into force at midnight on April 9 before suddenly a break of 90 days a few hours later. (Its change of April 9 in the courses increased prices on China and maintained a tariff of 10% between the two business partners.)
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When he revealed his initial prices plan, Trump said: “For the nations that treat us badly, we will calculate the combined rate of all their prices, non -monetary barriers and other forms of cheating.”
In the coming days, other administration figures have echoed the accusation of “cheating”.
“Our managers have enabled foreign countries to compel the rules of the game, to cheat, fly, fly, loot,” said White House advisor Stephen Miller on April 4 on Fox News. “It cost billions of dollars in wealth in America. … They stole our industries.”
The White House advisor Peter Navarro said in an interview with Fox News on April 6: “It is all these things that these foreign countries are doing that are explicitly designed to deceive us and are sanctioned by the World Trade Organization.”
Are countries confronted with these Prices caused now Cheat the United States on trade? The White House did not provide proof for this.
Although the deception on trade occurs – real accusations of it can be judged at the World Trade Organization – The White House formula to calculate price rates has supported the quantity of commercial imbalance of a country with the United States, and not on trichery proofs.
Trump and his allies “tend to use the term” cheating “as any action from a foreign country which leads to a trade deficit in bilateral goods with the United States,” Kent Jones, emeritus professor of economics at Babson College who specializes in commercial policy. “At first glance, this definition has no economic validity, because bilateral trade sales are generally determined not by trade and other government policies, but by specific commercial models by merchandise.”
Our analysis of the 10 countries with the highest rate rates announced on April 2 has shown that they are largely poor and small – and it is these factors, rather than unfair commercial practices, which made them sensitive to the highest rates. These countries export the resources they have and are too small and too poor, or both, to buy a lot in the United States.
The White House did not respond to requests for information from this article. The white house press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during the daily briefing of April 8 that country prices per country were “very carefully designed” and that they focused on the two rates collected by the non -monetary “trade partner and the regulations that inhibit trade.
What does “cheat” on trade mean?
There are ways that a country can “deceive” trade, ignoring the rules and standards of international trade policy. One way is the “spill”, which means selling a product to a trading partner at an artificially reduced price. Another consists of excessive government subsidies to producers, the United States and other countries have accused China. Several of these complaints were confirmed when they are taken to the WTO.
In these cases, the trading partner can assess rights – taxes on imported goods – to try to cancel the distortion. If this process cannot be resolved amicably, the parties can go to the World Trade Organization to arbitrate the dispute.
“A good example of this is the dispute of tender wood wood wood between decades between Canada and the United StatesWhere the United States claims that Canada unjustly subsidize its wooden wood industry through administratively determined costs, while Canada retorts that almost all of its wood is on provincial public land and must therefore fall under provincial regulations, “said Ross Burkhart, a political scientist from the State University of Boisse specializing in commercial policy.
Another type of cheating implies the handling of currencies, in which a country interferes with the exchange rate of its currency in a way that makes its exports cheaper to foreign buyers. This is something that the United States and other countries have accused China of doing.
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Sometimes business partners have accused the United States of cheating; Critics have sometimes been rubbed when the United States prohibits trade in certain products by saying that it would threaten national security.
We could argue that Trump has “cheated” in recent weeks by placing new prices in Canada and Mexico, in René in fact of the American-mexic-Canadian agreement which he negotiated during his first mandate. This agreement established the trade rules between the three countries, and it did not allow the additional rates that Trump that Trump imposed on the two countries.
How did the White House determine the new prices?
The White House formula to calculate the pricing plan of April 2 from certain basic digital entries. The formula took the American trade deficit in goods (but not services) with a particular country, divided it by the total of goods imported from this country, then divided this by two. Even if this calculation has produced a small result, each country starts at least 10%.
Although some have criticized this formula, it is largely based on the quantity of trade deficit of the United States with a given country. Nothing in this formula represents actions which are generally considered by commercial law or standards as a type of “cheating”.
Many of these commercial imbalances can be explained by factors that have nothing to do with the fact of the rules.
What are the 10 best prices in common?
We look at the 10 Countries or Territories that Trump’s April 2 Plan Assigned The Highest Tariffs Rates: Lesotho (50 Percent), Saint Pierre and Miquelon (50 pierient), Cambodia (49 Percent), Laos (48 piernt), Madagascar (47 pierient), Vietnam (46 pierient), Sri Lanka (44 drill) Myanmar (44 Percent), The Falkland Islands (42 percent) and Syria (41%).
One thing that these countries have in common is a high export relationship to the United States compared to its imports from the United States, for example, the value of exports from Lesotho to the United States is about 85 times the value of its imports from the United States, the closest ratio, for Syria, is still exports from 5 to 1 to imports.
These countries share other characteristics. One is that they are poor compared to the United States
In the gross domestic product per capita, a common measure of income per country, the American figure is 163 times Madagascar. The most equal nation is Vietnam, but even here, American GDP per capita is 19 times Vietnam.
These countries are also low in the population. The population of the United States is 100,000 times larger than the population of the Falkland Islands. The closest to these countries is Vietnam; The United States is about 3 times more populated.
Most of these countries represent a tiny fraction of the overall commercial volume of the United States. Vietnam has the largest part; Its exports represent just over 4% of the total American imports. The other nine are much smaller, none exceeding a part of half a pourcentage of American trade.
Why are small poor countries likely to have a trade surplus with the United States?
Experts say it is natural for small poor countries to have commercial surpluses with the United States.
Madagascar, an island nation off the African continent, “has around 80% of the world’s supply of vanilla,” said Burkhart. “The United States cannot produce vanilla, but need it in foodstuffs, then purchase. Madagascar is a relatively poor country, so it cannot compensate in purchases of what it does in exported vanilla. ”
Saint Pierre and Miquelon, French territory off the coast of Canada, “exported a massive hicleterie in the United States in 2024 as part of a territorial fishing dispute,” said Burkhart. But with only 5,500 people, the island’s territory is “so small that it barely bought anything in the United States”
Lesotho, a country landlocked by South Africa, “exports diamonds and textiles and any not much expensive costly and technological products,” said Jones. “Why should his bilateral trade with the United States be balanced?”
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Experts said it was not realistic to expect the prices to change the commercial imbalances in these small savings. “There is no way that the average resident of Madagascar can buy a Cadillac Escalade,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the Central-Central-Dutch Action Forum, referring to an American manufactured SUV which can cost $ 87,000 to more than $ 160,000.
These countries play the economic hand rather than the climate, the location and natural resources have treated them. In Sri Lanka, the main export is tea; In Syria torn by war, it is olive oil; In Laos, one of them is the potash, an agricultural contribution.
Even if these countries were to carry out a balanced trade with the United States, this would not necessarily save them from prices. In 2024, the United States had trade surpluses with countries like the Netherlands, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, the United Kingdom, Panama, Brazil, Belgium and the Dominican Republic, but these countries were struck by the minimum tariff of 10%.
One thing that the 10 best countries are not doing is cheating trade, experts have accepted.
“If Trump wants to say that their prices on American goods are too high, or that they manipulate their currency values, or they pour, or they use internal clandestine tax systems and tax regulations to disadvantage American exports,” said Jones, “he could document these practices and use American trade laws to justify administrative commercial restrictions to correct them.”
The editor Claire Cranford contributed to this report.