Trump is imposing these tariffs on goods imported to the USA, and he keeps calling them reciprocal tariffs - in other words he's only doing it because other countries are doing the same to the USA.

But this isn't even true.

The way they have worked out which countries' goods should have tariffs, and how much they should be, is actually based on the balance of trade between the USA and each other country. In other words the difference between how much the USA imports from a country and how much it exports to that country.

He (or rather, his goons) have looked at those numbers and applied a formula and come up with a number for what the tariffs should be for each country. So any country where they are selling more to America than they are buying from America is being "punished".

And yet, those countries have not necessarily done anything wrong - they have made their products, and people in America have chosen to buy them. It's not their fault that Americans like what they make, more than their own people like what America makes.

Also even countries like my own (UK) are subject to tariffs despite the fact that we actually do buy more from America than we sell to them.

It makes no sense at all, and it makes you wonder whether this notion of "punishing" countries which have supposedly done America wrong, isn't just some bullshit he's spreading while doing it for other reasons.

Although you probably don't have to wonder for long. It is.

Whether that's political gain, or undermining the world economy at Russia's behest, or even just making a quick buck by causing the markets to crash, having previously shorted the stocks, is hard to say. But it ain't the reason he's saying, because reason is there none.

[The above is my understanding of the situation, but happy to be corrected as required]