Who Came Up With The Bizarre Tariff Formula This Week

While pinpointing the exact individual who created the current tariff formula used by the US government is proving difficult, some information about its development and the involved entities has emerged

Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Trade Representative: Conflicting accounts suggest that the tariff formula may have originated from the Council of Economic Advisers and the U.S. Trade Representative.

Council of Economic Advisers: Senior White House officials have specifically pointed to the Council of Economic Advisers, led by economist Stephen Miran, as the group responsible for determining the tariff rates.

Stephen Miran is an American economist and the current chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, a position he has held since March 2025.  He was nominated to lead the Council of Economic Advisers by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate in March 2025.

He has commented on various economic issues, including criticizing the Federal Reserve's stimulus package in 2020. He has also co-authored a paper related to the Treasury's bond market policies and inflation. Additionally, he has published work on tariffs and currency strategies. He supports deregulation and has also expressed support for tax cuts and tariffs.

It has also been suggested Peter Navarro, as a senior trade advisor to President Trump, played a significant role in the administration's tariff policies and the associated financial projections. Here's a breakdown of his involvement:

Navarro was a vocal advocate for the Trump administration's tariffs and is widely considered one of the key architects of these policies. Navarro publicly stated that Trump's tariff plan would raise more than $6 trillion in federal revenue over the next decade. He also estimated specific revenue from certain sectors, such as predicting $100 billion would be raised from auto tariffs alone.

Navarro argued that tariffs are necessary to address trade imbalances and what he perceived as unfair trade practices by other countries. He claimed that the international trade system was "designed to cheat" the US and that other countries had systematically higher tariffs on US goods. He also argued that tariffs would incentivize companies to shift production to the US, creating jobs domestically.

Navarro defended the administration's tariff policies against criticism that they would hurt the economy and increase costs for American consumers. He downplayed the market sell-off triggered by the tariffs, predicting a market rebound and a bullish stock market boom.

Navarro hasn't explicitly admitted to being the source, there is speculation that he was involved in developing the specific formula used to calculate the tariffs, which some economists have criticized

U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Economists: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick stated that USTR economists have been working on a metric for years to reflect all trade barriers set up by a given country.
However, the specific individual who conceived the formula remains unknown.

The formula itself calculates a ratio based on a country's trade surplus with the US, derived from import and export figures published by the US Census Bureau for 2024