As Trump’s tariffs begin to kick in around the world, The Washington Post analyzed two of his claims: “we were losing $2 billion a day [under President Joe Biden], and “now we’re making $3 billion a day.”
In an analysis, Glenn Kessler wrote, “both the Treasury Department and the data released by Customs and Border Protection show Trump is way off the mark.”
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Kessler gave Trump “Four Pinocchios” and said, “Trump is peddling two nonsense numbers. First, tariffs are already bringing in $3 billion a year. He’s off by a factor of 10. Second, that Biden was losing $2 billion a year. That reflects a misunderstanding of trade — though with profound consequences.
That confused me at first, but I realized that he’s speaking “orders of magnitude,” which means that 365 rounds to 100.
It’s mostly done in physics, and briefly, your only count the number of digits. If I’m comparing a number with 3 zeros to a number with 12 zeroes, the actual number hardly matters.