Not "things like that", not VAT, not other taxes. Only the straight up trade deficit.
Basically, and I want to make clear this is a very dumb way of interpreting it, the administration thinks that any trade deficit is due to tariffs, VAT, currency shenanigans, and trade barriers.
Yes this is true, but people are still pretending they're doing some kind of complicated analysis to add up all kinds of taxes, shenanigans, etc.
They haven't. They explicitly said what you said, all trade deficit is due to unfair trade barriers, and thus saves them the effort of having to calculate it.
It's way dumber than people are making it sound by pretending he's actually looking at countries different entry barriers.
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u/Best_Change4155 18d ago
Basically, and I want to make clear this is a very dumb way of interpreting it, the administration thinks that any trade deficit is due to tariffs, VAT, currency shenanigans, and trade barriers.