President Trump has now unveiled his outline of the higher tariffs he proposes. They are much higher and, therefore, much more destructive of people’s wealth, than I or, apparently, many others had expected.
Trump claims to be doing this in the interest of reciprocity. In his Rose Garden speech, he noted, correctly, that you should judge countries’ openness to trade not just based on their explicit tariff rates but also based on their other barriers to trade. On that basis, he produced fantastic numbers showing what combining non-tariff barriers, including “currency manipulation,” with explicit tariff rates would imply for a tariff equivalent. When I saw on his graph that that leads to an equivalent tariff rate for China of 67%, I smelled a rat.
Of course, I will withhold final judgment about the authenticity of Trump’s number until his Council of Economic Advisers publishes a high-quality economic study backing these numbers. I’m skeptical that it will. It might publish such a study. I suspect that it will be full of exaggerations, much like the thinking of the president.
Why am I so skeptical about Trump’s claims? Because we have good data from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom.
In “Trade Freedom and the Myth of Tariff Reciprocity,” April 1, 2025, the Independent Institute’s Phillip Magness writes:
The United States is currently one of the worst offenders among developed nations in placing discriminatory tariffs and NTBs on our trading partners. This ignominious position may be seen in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, which compiles an annual “trade freedom” score for nearly 200 countries and political jurisdictions. According to the 2025 report, the United States ranks in 69th place, putting us lower than New Zealand (2nd), Australia (3rd), the United Kingdom (17th), Canada (18th), France (38th), and Germany (39th).
The Heritage 100-point scale combines the country’s trade-weighted average tariff rate with a scoring of its NTBs—an assortment of quotas, export restrictions, subsidies, regulations, and similar policies that discriminate against foreign goods or unfairly prop up domestic products. A score closer to 100 represents lower tariff rates and fewer discriminatory trade policies.
The United States scores a mediocre 75.6, which puts it only slightly better than China’s 74 and much worse than Canada’s 83.2.
This means that true reciprocity would mean the United States cutting trade restrictions on imports from many countries.
Although it would be an exaggeration, I’m tempted to say of everything that follows Trump’s correct point that you need to consider non-tariff barriers, something similar to what author Mary McCarthy said of Communist writer Lillian Hellman: Every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.”
