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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallOn April 6, 2025, CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins whether the Trump administration had used retail prices instead of import prices in its tariff calculation. Tapper cited an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) critique alleging that the choice made the calculated rates about four times too high. Rollins defended the administration’s formula and officials, but the interview transcript does not record her directly answering which price measure was used.
What Tapper asked Rollins
During an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Tapper put a specific question to Rollins: “Yes, but did you use retail prices, instead of import prices?” He described AEI economists’ position that the administration had used the wrong price measure in a calculation affecting tariff rates. The exchange was about an allegation concerning the model’s input—not a finding by an independent auditor.
Rollins challenged AEI’s credibility, saying it was not aligned with President Trump or an America First agenda, and called its economists wrong. She said she had not yet read their analysis but would do so, and added: “I have 100 percent faith in the formulas that they used and how they came up with these numbers.” The transcript captures her defense of the administration, but not a direct answer to Tapper’s repeated retail-versus-import-price question. Read the CNN interview transcript.
What AEI said was wrong with the tariff calculation
AEI economists Kevin Corinth and Stan Veuger argued that the administration used a retail-price measure where an import-price response was appropriate. In their analysis, that choice understated the relevant pass-through and led to tariff calculations roughly four times higher than their proposed correction. That is AEI’s economic critique; the materials cited here do not independently validate its model or establish the alleged error as settled fact.
Axios reported an illustrative recalculation for Vietnam: 12.2% rather than 46%. Those figures describe the AEI economists’ proposed corrected result, not an enacted tariff rate or a measured outcome. The authors also disputed the broader economic basis for the policy; Axios quoted them saying the administration’s formula “has no foundation in either economic theory or trade law.” That is their assessment, not a neutral legal or economic determination. Axios’s account of the AEI critique.
Why the formula’s parameter arithmetic is a separate question
Contemporaneous coverage described the administration’s published formula as using parameters ε=4 and φ=0.25. Because those values multiply to one, they cancel algebraically in the stated expression. Axios explained that arithmetic feature, but it does not resolve AEI’s separate objection about whether the model used the right kind or level of price elasticity in the first place. A formula can be arithmetically consistent as written and still be disputed over whether its inputs fit the economic question. Axios’s explanation of the formula.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the interview does—and does not—establish
- Established by the transcript: Tapper challenged Rollins about the retail-versus-import-price question, and Rollins defended the formula, criticized AEI, and said she would read its analysis.
- Attributed to AEI: the claim that the selected elasticity input made tariff calculations about four times too high, including the Vietnam example.
- Not established by this exchange: that Rollins admitted the calculation was wrong, that her defense disproved AEI’s argument, or that an independent audit settled the dispute.
Tapper also brought up the administration’s tariff on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, pointing to their lack of human inhabitants, imports, and exports while joking about penguins. That was another part of the interview, not evidence for or against AEI’s elasticity criticism.
This is a dispute reported in April 2025. The sources cited here do not establish current tariff rates or the present status of tariff litigation.
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