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Trump with his big board on Wednesday.
IMAGO/Sipa USA
US President Donald Trump has announced new punitive tariffs against dozens of countries. Now users and analysts believe they have deciphered the underlying calculation formula. It is surprisingly simple.
US President Donald Trump made a grand entrance when he presented a new tariff strategy on Wednesday evening: in the Rose Garden of the White House, he held a board up to the cameras on which he listed the planned tariffs for dozens of countries - including Switzerland.
Trump did not explain how the administration arrived at the respective figures. However, there is now growing evidence on the internet that the calculations are based on a simple formula.
For example, the entry for Switzerland reads: "Tariffs charged to the US: 61 percent", i.e. customs duties allegedly levied by Switzerland on US products. In the column next to it follows the sentence: "U.S.A Discounted Reciprocal Tariffs: 31 percent". The "discount tariffs" are now supposed to apply to Swiss imports into the USA.
One X user claims to have deciphered the logic behind this. According to his formula, the percentage is calculated by dividing the US trade deficit with a country by the total imports from that country.
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According to the US government, the figures for Switzerland in 2024 were a deficit of 38.5 billion dollars and an import volume of 63.4 billion dollars. That comes to 0.607 - or around 61 percent.
For the "discounted" tariffs, the Trump administration then appears to simply take half of this figure - in this case around 31 percent.
Data analysts have also checked the formula and come to the same results for several countries.
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The only fixed minimum value: no country on Trump's list will be subject to a tariff of less than 10 percent - even if the formula produces lower values.
Meanwhile, critics accuse Trump of risking economic damage with symbolic political appearances. Observers see the tariff list as a mixture of economic revenge and a demonstration of political power. The impact on trade - including with Switzerland - is likely to be considerable.
