Social media users immediately started analyzing the calculation methods after President Trump introduced extensive new tariffs. The United States imposed a 10% universal base tariff while adding additional percentages to nations that Trump considers unprofitable for the American economy. Economists and journalists soon started questioning whether the White House calculation methods stemmed from an unexpected origin: a chatbot.
The economic expert James Surowiecki analyzed the numbers to find a repeating mathematical structure. The derivation of each tariff involved dividing a nation’s trade deficit with the U.S. by their exports to the U.S., followed by a simple halving of that outcome. Several AI chatbots suggested this basic calculation as a solution for trade imbalance when asked for advice, which has raised questions about AI involvement in U.S. trade policy development.
The White House denied the allegations, yet Politico confirmed the official formula used by the White House resembled Surowiecki’s model after rephrasing it. Consumer technology has repeatedly drawn criticism from the Trump administration, as it did when officials used Signal and other apps to discuss sensitive war plans.
The administration’s disregard for trade policy is evident through its decision to impose tariffs on Heard Island, since it lacks human inhabitants, and on Australia, which maintains a trade surplus with the United States. The basic reasoning system fails to understand real global economic operations. The United States operates as a service-based economy, which performs best in software development and design and logistics instead of large-scale manufacturing.
The implementation of trade barriers against developing nations such as Ethiopia and Madagascar will not bring back manufacturing facilities to their territories. Sending migrant workers out of the country will not create cheaper labor costs for domestic workers. These perplexing AI-like policies appear to demand such expectations from the United States. The artificial nature of this logic combined with its out-of-touch character emerges whether ChatGPT was used or not.
