Accusations are flying that President Trump used AI to formulate his new tariff plan, after an internet personality discovered ChatGPT suggests the same calculation method.
Political commentator Destiny (@TheOmniLiberal on X) sparked the theory, suggesting the administration used ChatGPT to determine tariff percentages presented during Wednesday’s “Make America Wealthy” event. According to Destiny, the tariffs “make absolutely no fucking sense” because the formula is simply a country’s trade deficit divided by U.S. imports from that country, or 10%, “whichever is greater.”
Destiny posted a screenshot of his ChatGPT exchange, in which he asked the bot, “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 responded with a proportional tariff formula based on trade deficits, designed to incentivize balanced trade, adding that duties should have “a minimum tariff of 10%.”
John Aravosis, a legal and journalism influencer, amplified the accusation in a TikTok video. He demonstrated how each tariff seems to have been calculated using ChatGPT’s method: dividing the U.S. trade deficit with a country by total imports from that country to the U.S. “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 stated.
Aravosis also claimed the stock market is “totally crashing.” The New York Times reported that Peter Tchir, head of macro strategy at Academy Securities, called Thursday a disaster, as the S&P 500 fell by more than 4% and Nasdaq slid by more than 5%.
