Economic analysts are trying to make sense of sweeping tariffs announced yesterday by US President Donald Trump. In a surprising twist, most countries in the Middle East have managed to avoid the harshest rates, unlike China, which is now facing a massive 54 per cent tariff on its exports to the US.
Among Middle Eastern nations, Israel will face a relatively steep 17 per cent tariff — significantly higher than Egypt, Turkiye, the UAE, Morocco, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which all landed in the ten per cent baseline category. Iran, meanwhile, was not included in the list, likely due to pre-existing sanctions.
Despite being the US’ largest trading partner in the region, Israel appears to be taking pre-emptive action. On Tuesday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich signed a directive scrapping all remaining tariffs on imports from the US, in what analysts view as an effort to win exemption from Trump’s upcoming wave of levies.
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Economic observers are pointing to glaring inconsistencies in how tariff rates were assigned across the Middle East — particularly when comparing Egypt and Jordan. Middle East correspondent for the Economist, Gregg Carlstrom, exposed the inconsistency on X. “If you want to see how the Trump administration seems to have made up its tariff rates out of thin air, let’s look at Jordan, the first Arab country to sign a free-trade agreement with the US (in 2000). It got whacked with a 20% tariff rate anyway, among the region’s highest,” wrote Carlstrom.
He went on to explain that according to the White House, this is because Jordan supposedly imposes a 40 per cent trade barrier on US goods — a claim debunked by US government data, which shows that many American goods enter Jordan tariff-free. Sectors like jewellery, cheese, office furniture and electrical motors face zero tariffs in Jordan, while Egypt imposes double-digit rates (10 to 60 per cent) on those same categories.
“It’s brain-addled economics,” Carlstrom quipped. “Egypt’s average tariffs are 2.5 times higher than Jordan’s, yet Jordan gets punished.”
In a scathing analysis, renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs slammed Trump’s tariff plan as “childish” and “bizarre.”
“Tariffs are going to lower living standards. They’re going to wreck the US economy,” Sachs warned, calling the administration’s logic behind the tariffs “completely fallacious.”
Sachs argued that the US trade deficit — roughly $1 trillion — is not the result of foreign countries taking advantage of America, as Trump claims, but is instead a consequence of the US spending far more than it produces. He pointed to chronic overspending fuelled by massive budget deficits, a sprawling military-industrial complex, and costly foreign entanglements.
According to Sachs, the US pours hundreds of billions of dollars annually into maintaining military bases in over 80 countries, financing wars abroad, and providing extensive aid to allies like Israel. He also criticised the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and the lack of enforcement on tax evasion, calling it a system that enables reckless government spending.
“Instead of addressing this unsustainable financial behaviour,” Sachs said, “the administration is slapping tariffs on other countries — essentially taxing American consumers — under the illusion that this will solve the problem.”
Sachs stressed that tariffs won’t reduce the trade deficit because they do nothing to curb the core issue: excessive government spending paired with low national savings. “This is economic misdiagnosis on a dangerous scale,” Sachs warned. “The real issue isn’t trade — it’s Washington’s own financial irresponsibility.”