Not surprisingly, Labour ministers are claiming the imposition of “only” a 10% across-the-board tariff on UK exports to America (excluding steel, aluminium and automobiles, already hit with a 25% rate) as vindication of their diplomatic skill in dealing with Donald Trump (‘It could’ve been much worse’: how UK avoided a bigger blow from Trump tariffs, 5 April).
In fact, the figure of 10% owes less to diplomacy and rather more to the method used to calculate the tariff. The algorithm applied is simple (and simplistic) in the extreme: the tariff equals either the total deficit in US trade with a particular country, divided by the value of that country’s exports to America and then halved, or a default 10%, whichever is larger (Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists, 3 April).
From the UK, then, no special skills in diplomacy, and from Mr Trump and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, little understanding of the economics of international trade either.
John Bailey
Farnborough, Hampshire
• I can’t help conflating an imaginary meeting between Donald Trump and Liz Truss and the “mugging” scene in Crocodile Dundee. Trump: “That’s not an economy-crashing policy. This is an economy-crashing policy.”
Lee Wilkinson
Rossett, Wrexham
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