The Daily Fuckup

On February 9, the Trump White House was still trying to turn its India tariff move into a clean political win, but the story refused to stay clean. The administration said Trump had struck a trade arrangement with India that would open that market to U.S. goods and lower the reciprocal tariff on Indian imports to 18 percent after India agreed to stop buying Russian oil. The problem was that the deal’s public presentation and its actual mechanics did not exactly line up like a well-run operation. The White House had already said Trump removed an extra 25 percent tariff tied to India’s Russian-oil purchases, but the numbers and effective dates were a moving target in the public rollout. That kind of ambiguity is a gift to critics and a headache for importers, who want to know what rate applies now, not what rate might apply after the next victory-lap statement.