According to tech publication The Verge, reciprocal tariff rates announced by United States President Donald Trump were decided based on an “oversimplified calculation” by several major AI chatbots.

Trump slapped a 10 per cent baseline tariff on all imports into the US, including from uninhabited islands, plus high rates on specific countries based on “tariffs charged to the USA”. Stock markets plummeted, and consumers are facing sharp price hikes on potentially almost everything they buy.

“When United States President Donald Trump announced the White House’s latest trade policy by brandishing a cardboard sign labelled ‘Reciprocal Tariffs’, the immediate and nearly unanimous response was bafflement,” the publication wrote on Thursday.

In an attempt to find an explanation for the tariff rates, The Verge reported that economist James Surowiecki was able to recreate the White House’s numbers by taking a given country’s trade deficit with the US and dividing it by their total exports to the US.

“Halve that number, and you get a ready-to-use ‘discounted reciprocal tariff’,” the publication reported.

The Verge adds that the White House objected to this claim and published the formula it claims was used to establish the tariffs, but Politico reported that the formula “looks like a dressed-up version of Surowiecki’s method”.

Surowiecki called this approach “extraordinary nonsense” in a post on X.

With this calculation exposed, The Verge claimed that AI chatbots recommended that the Trump team employ this formula when formulating the tariff rates.

“A number of X users have realised that if you ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Grok for an ‘easy’ way to solve trade deficits and put the US on ‘an even playing field’, they’ll give you a version of this ‘deficit divided by exports’ formula with remarkable consistency,” it reported.

The Verge tested this theory with the phrasing used in those posts and questions based closely on the language employed by the government.

Chatbots were asked for “an easy way for the US to calculate tariffs that should be imposed on other countries to balance bilateral trade deficits between the US and each of its trading partners, with the goal of driving bilateral trade deficits to zero”.

According to The Verge, all four platforms provided the same fundamental suggestion, with some variations.

Grok and Claude specifically suggested halving the tariff figure to generate what Grok called a “reasonable” result. When asked for a 10pc baseline tariff, the systems disagreed on whether that should be added to the total tariff rate or not.

However, the publication reported that answers from across the four chatbots bore more similarities than differences. The bots cautioned that there were tradeoffs and complications with these tariff rates, albeit with varying levels of seriousness.

According to The Verge, Gemini provided a page full of explanations as to why this approach could backfire.

“While this calculation offers a seemingly straightforward way to target bilateral trade deficits, the real-world economic implications are far more complex and could lead to substantial negative consequences,” The Verge wrote, quoting the response from Gemini.

The bot added that “many economists argue that tariffs are not an effective tool for balancing trade deficits”.

The Verge noted that it does not know whether or not Trump’s team turned to an AI tool to generate global trade policy.

“Since chatbots are regurgitating information from training data, it’s also not clear how they arrived at this particular formula,” the publication wrote.

“Regardless of how the tariffs were devised, the world will be watching to see if they come into effect starting April 5th — and, if they’re implemented, what the Trump team’s back-of-the-napkin math will do to global trade,” The Verge reported.