Oops! Trump Allegedly Uses AI

to Launch Trade Tariff War

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia –The reciprocal tariff announced by the President of the United States (US) Donald Trump is said to be made by Artificial Intelligence (AI). This was revealed by a simple calculation carried out by economist James Surowiecki and The Verge page.

The Verge reported that the new tariff figure came from a simplified calculation from an AI chatbot. According to the report, Trump’s team needed to use it because the formulation had to be done in a short time.

Meanwhile. Surowiecki said someone could make the same figure as the White House’s calculation. The method is to take a country’s trade deficit with the US. Next, the resulting figure is divided by total exports to the US.

“Divide those two numbers, and you will get a reciprocal discount tariff that is ready to use,” he explained.

The US media, Politico also indicated a similar allegation. A number of X users tried to do the same thing. They conducted an experiment by asking a number of chatbots, namely ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok. The calculation was by solving the trade deficit and placing the US at the same level, with the formula produced by the chatbot being the same, namely the deficit divided by exports.

But the White House denied the claim. The government said it would publish the formula used. Trump’s import policy burdens a number of countries. The US government applies a 10% import tariff base to all countries and there is also a reciprocal tariff. Each country gets a different amount, based on the trade deficit it causes. For example, Indonesia is subject to a tariff of 32%.

SOURCE : CNBC INDONESIA