“How did Trump calculate the first column of tariffs charged to the US?” Juan in Nicaragua asks.

At first, trade economists were flummoxed by how the tariffs had been calculated.

But the crude methodology used by the White House to calculate the list of “reciprocal” global tariffs has since become clear.

The Trump administration used a simple formula: It took each country’s trade deficit with the US, divided it by the value of that country’s exports to the US – and then divided this figure by half, in a gesture of “kindness.”

Let’s take this step-by-step, using official US data and the example of Vietnam, which President Donald Trump claimed imposed a 90% tariff on US goods and therefore would get a 46% “reciprocal” tariff of its own.

In 2024, Vietnam, a massive and growing global manufacturing hub, sold $136.6 billion worth of goods to the US.

Because Americans want to buy things like Nike shoes a lot more than Vietnamese want to buy things like Ford cars, the US sold a lot less to Vietnam. Vietnam bought just $13.1 billion of goods from the US that same year.

Subtracting $13.1 billion from $136.6 billion gives Vietnam a trade surplus of $123.5 billion with the US. But one man’s trade surplus is another man’s trade deficit – which Trump has made clear he finds unpalatable, akin to being “ripped off.”

Dividing the $123.5 billion by $136.6 billion (the value of Vietnam’s exports to the US) gives 0.90 – or, in percentage terms, 90%. In a supposed act of “kindness,” Trump nearly halved this, meaning Vietnam will “only” now face a tariff of 46%.

With few exceptions, the White House repeated this methodology for all countries on its tariff chart. To be clear, these countries are being punished for having trade surpluses with the US – not because they had imposed a “tariff” on goods traded with the world’s largest economy.

The trend was first pointed out by James Surowiecki, a financial writer, in a post on X.

This post has been updated with additional information.

CNN
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Editor’s Note: Call to Earth is a CNN editorial series committed to reporting on the environmental challenges facing our planet, together with the solutions. Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative has partnered with CNN to drive awareness and education around key sustainability issues and to inspire positive action.

Swedish photographer Christian Aslund is riding a small boat along the coast of Spitsbergen, an island in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Here, deep into the Arctic Circle and midway between Norway and the north pole, he is investigating the health of the glaciers, by comparing them to what they looked like in archival photos.

He takes a picture, trying to place his boat in the exact position occupied by an explorer who took a similar photograph over 100 years ago. But the difference is striking: in the shot from 1918, the boat is heading towards a massive glacier. In the image Aslund took in 2024, he is heading toward what looks like almost bare land.

The comparison is part of a series that Aslund worked on in collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Institute and Greenpeace, to document the retreat of Svalbard’s glaciers over the last century. He visited the area twice — in 2002 and in 2024 — and picked which sites to photograph based on historical images that he found in the institute’s archives.

© Christian Åslund / Norwegian Polar Institute / Greenpeace

“In 2002, the widespread knowledge, or acceptance, of climate change wasn’t as broad as it is now,” Aslund says. He published the first set of photos over 20 years ago to create awareness of how much the glaciers were receding. But to his surprise, he received some comments suggesting that the images had been “Photoshopped,” that the glaciers were just expanding and contracting naturally, or that he had taken the pictures in the summer and compared them to archival shots taken in the winter: “But they are not — if you look at at the archive photos, you see that they don’t have any sea ice and not enough snow on the mountains (for it to be winter). And also, in the winter, it’s permanently dark.”

In the summer of 2024, he decided to return, taking pictures at the exact same locations as before. “I had a feeling that the glaciers would have receded even more,” he says, “and that was confirmed. We wanted to show that these glaciers are not going back and forth. They are constantly being pulled back by a warming climate. It’s a major difference.”

The Arctic has been warming twice as fast as the rest of the world since the year 2000, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but according to other estimates it has warmed even more — four times faster than the global average since 1979. NASA says summer Arctic sea ice is shrinking by 12.2% per decade due to warming temperatures.

As sea ice melts, it reflects much less heat back into space, and that heat is instead absorbed by the seawater. The melting of glaciers, on the other hand, contributes to a rise in the global sea level, which carries the risk of submerging inhabited areas. “Both are melting in response to warming temperatures,” says Julienne Stroeve, a professor of Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London, who adds that the fresh water that goes into the ocean can also disrupt global ocean currents and have disruptive biological implications for marine life.

© Christian Åslund / Norwegian Polar Institute / Greenpeace

“Over the last century we have seen a reduction of the overall amount of ice in the Arctic Ocean, reducing in area and thickness,” Stroeve continues. “Today’s end-of-summer ice cover is 40-50% less than it was 100 years ago and all climate models and observationally based studies suggest the first ice-free summers will occur by 2050.” This, she adds, will create a profound transformation and is something that hasn’t occurred for at least 130,000 years. It will further warm the Arctic, leading to enhanced ice melt from places like Greenland, and thaw permafrost, destabilizing communities all around the Arctic Ocean.

Aslund says that when he released the latest pictures from his 2024 series, he faced some of the same criticism that he received in 2002. “I’m amazed how in 2024 people are still not believing what they see. The whole point of this project is that an image shows more than a thousand words, and that this is real, but still people have problems believing in it,” he says.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if 10 years from now, most of what we documented will completely disappear. Unfortunately, if we don’t pull any major handbrake very soon, I think that will be that will be the case.”

Nuuk, Greenland
AP
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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is in Greenland for a three-day trip aimed at building trust and cooperation with Greenlandic officials at a time when the Trump administration is seeking control of the vast Arctic territory.

Frederiksen announced plans for her visit after US Vice President JD Vance visited a US air base in Greenland last week and accused Denmark of underinvesting in the territory.

Greenland is a mineral-rich, strategically critical island that is becoming more accessible because of climate change. Trump has said that the landmass is critical to US security. It’s geographically part of North America, but is a semiautonomous territory belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark.

After her arrival Wednesday, Frederiksen walked the streets of the capital, Nuuk, with the incoming Greenlandic leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen. She is also to meet with the future Naalakkersuisut, the Cabinet, in a visit due to last through Friday.

“It has my deepest respect how the Greenlandic people and the Greenlandic politicians handle the great pressure that is on Greenland,” she said in government statement announcing the visit.

On the agenda are talks with Nielsen about cooperation between Greenland and Denmark.

Nielsen has said in recent days that he welcomes the visit, and that Greenland would resist any US attempt to annex the territory.

“We must listen when others talk about us. But we must not be shaken. President Trump says the United States is ‘getting Greenland.’ Let me make this clear: The U.S. is not getting that. We don’t belong to anyone else. We decide our own future,” he wrote Sunday on Facebook.

“We must not act out of fear. We must respond with peace, dignity and unity. And it is through these values that we must clearly, clearly and calmly show the American president that Greenland is ours.”

For years, the people of Greenland, with a population of about 57,000, have been working toward eventual independence from Denmark.

The Trump administration’s threats to take control of the island one way or the other, possibly even with military force, have angered many in Greenland and Denmark. The incoming government chosen in last month’s election wants to take a slower approach on the question of eventual independence.

The political group in Greenland most sympathetic to the US president, the Naleraq party that advocates a swift path toward independence, was excluded from coalition talks to form the next government.

Peter Viggo Jakobsen, associate professor at the Danish Defense Academy, said last week that the Trump administration’s aspirations for Greenland could backfire and push the more mild parties closer to Denmark.

He said that “Trump has scared most Greenlanders away from this idea about a close relationship to the United States because they don’t trust him.”