President Donald Trump is facing accusations of using AI to create his tariff plan, which he presented during the “Make America Wealthy” event on Wednesday. Critics claim that the formula behind his tariff calculations mirrors one suggested by ChatGPT, leading to questions about the role AI is playing in U.S. policy decisions.
The accusations first surfaced when Destiny, a popular political commentator, suggested the Trump administration relied on ChatGPT to calculate the tariff rates. According to Destiny, this explains why the tariffs “make absolutely no fucking sense.”
“They’re simply dividing the trade deficit we have with a country with our imports from that country, or using 10%, whichever is greater,” Destiny, who goes by @TheOmniLiberal on X, posted on Wednesday.
He went on to share a screenshot of his interaction with ChatGPT, asking the AI, “What would be an easy way to calculate the tariffs that should be imposed on other countries so that the US is on even-playing fields when it comes to trade deficit? Set minimum at 10%.”
ChatGPT’s response was straightforward: “To calculate tariffs that help level the playing field in terms of trade deficits (with a minimum tariff of 10%), you can use a proportional tariff formula based on the trade deficit with each country. The idea is to impose higher tariffs on countries with which the U.S. has larger trade deficits, thus incentivizing more balanced trade.” Along with this, the bot provided a formula for calculating the tariffs.
I think they asked ChatGPT to calculate the tariffs from other countries, which is why the tariffs make absolutely no fucking sense.
They're simply dividing the trade deficit we have with a country with our imports from that country, or using 10%, whichever is greater. https://t.co/Rc45V7qxHl pic.twitter.com/SUu2syKbHS
— Destiny | Steven Bonnell II (@TheOmniLiberal) April 2, 2025
John Aravosis, an influencer with a background in law and journalism, also weighed in. He shared a TikTok video where he broke down how the tariffs were calculated, which essentially involved dividing the U.S. trade deficit with a country by the total imports from that country.
“Guys, they’re setting U.S. trade policy based on a bad ChatGPT question that got it totally wrong. That’s how we’re doing trade war with the world,” Aravosis said, adding that the stock market was “totally crashing.”
The market was rattled, with the S&P 500 dropping more than 4% and the Nasdaq sliding by over 5% on Thursday, which Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities, called a “disaster,” according to The New York Times.
