Request for information
TFA talks at length about
> a list of products totaling $34bn
and I'm sure that thirty-four thousand million USD1 is a headline-grabbing amount of money, but it's not clear to me what the number refers to. I speculated that buying 1 unit of everything on the list FOB Shanghai might total to $34E9, but that doesn't seem possible. Does the USA import $34 billion dollars-worth of products on this list over some unspecified time period? If so is it the amount paid to China, or the value of the goods sold and used in the USA?
25% of $34E9 is $8.5E9. Has the US Treasury shared with the US electorate exactly (or even vaguely) what it will do with this extra income?
Perhaps some of it will need to be invested in anti-smuggling operations: some of the list items are clearly high value in units of $/kg, and 25% tariffs are worth avoiding.
1I suppose that they mean USD and not HKD!