Trump(dis)order is to hit Sri Lanka very badly with limited options available

IN 1850, the French economist and statesman, Frederic Bastiat, distinguished a bad economist from a good economist by looking at how he will consider the consequences of an economic policy. He said that a bad economist will consider only the consequences that can be seen immediately, and a good economist will consider both for immediate consequences and those that can be foreseen. I

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It seems that President Donald Trump and his economic advisors fall into this first category since they have been concerned only about the immediate consequences of their tariff policy. Trump has unilaterally increased the tariff rates to make America wealthy again.

He has targeted the countries which have been running a trade surplus with USA by adopting a higher tariff rate than that imposed by USA on them. According to him, these countries have plundered the wealth of Americans, and it is now his duty to correct it. Previously, he announced tariff increases on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. When these countries countered his measure by introducing retaliatory tariff rates, he went for a general revision of all tariff rates to 2 April 2023 effective later in the month.

That revision has two components: a baseline tariff rate of 10% on all imports and a reciprocal tariff rate based on 44% of the ratio of the trade surplus to total exports to USA which his officials have reckoned as a proxy for their tariff and non-tariff rates imposed on them on imports from USA.2 He called this general tariff revision event as the Economic Liberation Inde-pendence.

Bizarre way of calculating rate of plundering cum looting