Bob Edlin: Taking Stock of Trump’s liberal use of falsehoods....

Taking Stock of Trump’s liberal use of falsehoods during the Liberalisation Day declaration that has tariffied the globe

Business writer Rob Stock applied a New Zealand filter to his examination of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” charts.

He winkled out documents from the US International Trade Administration which showed Trump’s “big lie” about the tariffs New Zealand levies on imports from the US.

A big lie from Trump?

We are astonished!

Umm – no we’re not. Your PoO team read several reports that Trump made a series of false claims about tariffs and trade.

Stock’s focus was on the dubious rationale applied by Trump when he slapped a 10 per cent on imports from this country.

He noted that Trump’s chart showed what he claimed were the levels of “unfair” tariffs charged by other countries on US goods entering their countries.

It contained the false claim that in New Zealand, these tariffs amounted to 20%, which the White House is using to justify slapping an additional 10% tariff on the hefty tariffs it already charges on New Zealand goods entering the US.

That could deliver a hit to New Zealand exporters of around $900 million, according to Westpac. It would take some New Zealand dairy import tariffs as high as 29.6% when New Zealand’s tariffs for US dairy products is effectively zero.

But the documents published by US government’s International Trade Administration (ITA) reveal a different story.

“Most tariffs range from zero to 10%,” the ITA’s website says. “These duty rates apply mostly to clothing, footwear, and carpeting. Most passenger vehicles and almost all computer software and hardware enter tariff-free.”

And, it says: “Alcoholic beverages (including beer, wine, and spirits), tobacco products, and some petroleum products are subject to excise duties that also apply to similar items that are produced domestically.”

And:

ITA documents show what the US sees as non-tariff barriers to exporting goods and services to New Zealand, however, it is more often complementary of easy access to New Zealand for US exporters, rather than making claims of unfair treatment, as Trump appears to claim.

How many of Stock’s readers would have been surprised to learn of false claims emanating from an Administration headed by a serial liar?

Liberalisation Day was an exercise in the liberal dissemination of bullsh*t to explain a tax-raising programme that within a week has thrown the global economy into chaos.

CNN’s fact check of Trump’s remarks included:

US trade deficit with Canada

Trump, claiming “we subsidize a lot of countries,” falsely said “it’s close to $200 billion a year” with Canada. Trump has repeatedly used this $200 billion figure to describe the US trade deficit with Canada in particular, which is actually far lower than $200 billion; official US statistics show the 2024 deficit with Canada in goods and services trade was $35.7 billion and $70.6 billion in goods trade alone.

Trump didn’t mention the trade deficit in particular this time, but even if he was intending to use the word “subsidize” more broadly, there is no basis for the claim.

Who pays tariffs

Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, because of the tariffs he imposed on China during his first term, the US “took in hundreds of billions of dollars” that “they paid.” In fact, US importers, not foreign exporters like China, make the tariff payments, and study after study has found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on China; it’s easy to find specific examples of companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.

Previous presidents’ tariffs on China

Trump also repeated his frequent false claim that, before his first presidency, China “never paid 10 cents to any other president” from tariffs. Aside from the fact that US importers make the tariff payments, the US was actually generating billions per year in revenue from tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since 1789. Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, imposed additional tariffs on Chinese goods.

Inflation under Biden and Trump

Trump falsely claimed that, during Joe Biden’s presidency, the US had “the highest” inflation “in the history of our country.” Trump could have fairly said that the year-over-year US inflation rate hit a 40-year high in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. (And the rate then plummeted. Inflation in the last full month of the Biden administration, December 2024, was 2.9%; it was 3% in January 2025, a month partly under Biden and partly under Trump.)

Gas prices

Trump, claiming he has brought prices “way down” since taking office again in late January, said that “gasoline is way under $3.” That is true in some parts of the country, but the national average for regular gasoline on the day he spoke was about $3.24 per gallon, according to data published by AAA – higher than on Trump’s inauguration day, when the AAA national average was about $3.12.

That’s not to say Trump is responsible for the increase; presidents have a limited impact on gas prices, and there was a larger increase over the equivalent period last year. But the national average has not fallen during this presidency to date.

Glenn Kessler, editor and chief writer of The Fact Checker at the Washington Post, said Trump’s speech was riddled with falsehoods and misleading statements on trade that he has made for years.

But now they are determining policy that will increase the costs of goods for many Americans. Here’s a quick sampling, in the order in which he made them. We’re sure we missed some — and some claims still require more checking.

Some examples:

“For years, hardworking American citizens who were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it’s our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”

This is exaggerated. In Trump’s telling, the United States is a poor country, beset by outside forces. Not only does the U.S. have the largest gross domestic product in the world, but its GDP per capita is much higher than that of any other large country. For instance, GDP per capita in the United States is nearly $90,000, compared with $14,000 for China, $58,000 for Germany and $36,000 for Japan.

Tariffs are in effect a tax increase, one that falls heavily on lower-income workers. Economists agree that tariffs — essentially a tax on domestic consumption — are paid by importers, such as U.S. companies, which in turn pass on most or all of the costs to consumers or producers who may use imported materials in their products. As a matter of demand and supply elasticities, overseas producers will pay part of the tax if there are fewer goods sold to the United States. Domestic producers in effect get a subsidy because they can raise their prices to the level imposed on importers.

Not only will tariffs be unlikely to reduce the budget deficit — especially if the economy sinks — but it’s a fantasy to suggest the national debt can be paid with tariffs.

“The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 percent tariff on motorcycles. Meanwhile, Thailand and others are charging much higher prices, like 60 percent, India charges 70 percent, Vietnam charges 75 percent, and others are even higher than that. Likewise, until today, the United States has for decades charged a 2.5 tariff. Think of that 2.5 percent on foreign-made automobiles. The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs.”

Some of Trump’s numbers are suspect. India charges a 50 percent tariff on motorcycles, not 70 percent, and recently announced a cut to 40 percent. In any case, Harley-Davidson already got around that duty by assembling in India most of the motorcycles sold in the country.

While Trump highlights the low U.S. tariff on foreign cars, he ignores the fact that for more than 50 years the United States has imposed a 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks. That’s much higher than the European tariff on cars.

Moreover, Trump ignores that trade can be mutually beneficial. The European Union is the largest export market for the U.S., and if the Europeans retaliate, that will be a big loss for American manufacturers. International trade works in such a way that some countries dominate some markets and don’t compete as much in others. The French have trade restrictions on U.S. wine, just as the U.S. has trade restrictions on French clothing.

“Toyota sells 1 million foreign-made automobiles into the United States, and General Motors sells almost none. Ford sells very little. None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries.”

This is misleading. Market forces, not trade, are a critical factor. American cars have fared poorly in Japan because the Japanese prefer smaller, more fuel-efficient models. But the Chinese like American cars, which, contrary to Trump’s claim, are allowed to be sold there. Until 2023, General Motors sold more cars in China than in the U.S., but sales have fallen because China has developed a preference for electric cars — where GM has lagged.

“Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300 percent tariff on many of our dairy products. They do the first, the first can of milk, they do the first little carton of milk at a very low price. But after that it gets bad, and then it gets up to 275, 300 percent.”

Trump has forgotten he fixed this. The high dairy tariff was largely eliminated in Trump’s renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement during his first term. Now it only kicks in after the U.S. has hit a certain level of tariff-free sales in a year — which has not yet happened.

“Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy; it would have been a much different story.”

This is nonsense history. The income tax was intended to shift the burden to wealthier Americans as the cost of tariffs fall mainly on lower-income people. Tax revenue was also considered a more stable source of funds. One big advocate for an income tax was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican. As for the Great Depression, many historians say the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, signed into law in 1930, worsened the economic slowdown because it sparked a global trade war.

“If you look at China, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term.”

This is false. Records maintained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed that about $75 billion was raised on Chinese goods by the time Trump left office — most of which was paid by American consumers. (He also had to spend $28 billion to bail out farmers harmed by the loss of business to other countries when China retaliated.)

“They [China] never paid 10 cents to any other president, and yet they paid hundreds of billions.”

This is false. Tariffs have been collected on Chinese goods since the early days of the republic. President George Washington signed the Tariff Act of 1789, when trade between China and the United States was already established. Tariffs on China generated at least $8 billion every year since 2009.

While fact-checkers have been kept busy winnowing the wheat from the chaff, students of absurdism have been given a wealth of material to generate mockery.

They quickly spotted that a group of barren, uninhabited volcanic islands near Antarctica, covered in glaciers and home only to penguins, has been swept up in Trump’s trade war, as the US president hit them with a 10% tariff on goods.

Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which form an external territory of Australia, are among the remotest places on Earth.

The Guardian noted they are accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth on Australia’s west coast.

They are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago.

Nevertheless, Heard and McDonald islands featured in a list released by the White House of “countries” that would have new trade tariffs imposed.

On the other hand, Russia got away with a zero tariff.

Putin needs appeasing more than those pesky penguins, apparently.

Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE. - where this article was sourced.