The mistake in Trump’s tariff formula
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What is the error in the calculation Donald Trump used to work out his new tariffs?
What happened when the government ordered a recount of bobbies on the beat?
When is a tax freeze not a tax freeze?
And do redheads really have a 25% higher tolerance to pain?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.
This episode was originally broadcast on the 9th April.
Presenter: Tim Harford Reporter: Charlotte McDonald Producers: Nathan Gower and Lizzy McNeill Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Brenda Brown Sound mix: James Beard Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If a Banksy appeared on your house, you'd be sitting on a fortune, right? |
| 0:07.0 | At first you think you're gifted, but you're actually not. |
| 0:10.5 | This is a tale of two murals, Margate's Valentine's Day Mascara and the lowest off seagull. |
| 0:17.3 | And the true cost of free art for the people who have to live with it. |
| 0:21.5 | 40,000 pounds cost per annum. |
| 0:23.8 | We didn't know what to do. |
| 0:25.5 | Nobody's turned up to say, we'll help you protect it. |
| 0:29.0 | The Banksy story. |
| 0:30.3 | When Banksy comes to town, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:40.2 | Hello and welcome to the last in this series of more or less. |
| 0:44.1 | We're making a list, we're checking it twice, just to make sure we haven't accidentally |
| 0:48.0 | tariffed some penguins, and I'm Tim Harford. |
| 0:51.5 | This week, when is a tax freeze, not a tax freeze? Hello, hello, hello, |
| 0:56.3 | strange goings on in the world of counting police officers? Charlotte McDonald tells me why |
| 1:02.1 | redheads are tougher than I am. But first, let's start with Liberation Day. The day, |
| 1:08.7 | US trade policy liberated itself from the shackles of |
| 1:12.7 | rationality. In a few moments, I will sign a historic executive order instituting reciprocal |
| 1:19.4 | tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal, that means they do it to us and we do |
| 1:26.2 | it to them. Very simple. Can't get any simpler than that. |
| 1:30.6 | Let's just get the obvious stuff out of the way. These tariffs are not reciprocal. The average |
| 1:36.9 | tariff the EU puts on the US is somewhere between 1 and 5%, depending on who's counting. They got a |
... |
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