White House publishes a table of steep percentage fees charged on imports from various countries that make little sense, claiming it’s based on a rigorous and complex system of economic calculations

Somebody notices the percentages for all these countries are just the trade deficit divided by imports, which is a formula as simple as it is arbitrary

White House lackey says “Nuh uh, we have a totally complex formula for this” and publishes an imposing equation full of Greek symbols and letters

Turns out the Greek symbols refer to arbitrary values set by the White House that cancel each other out, and the letters just represent… the trade deficit divided by imports.

tl;dr: They used a dead-simple, arbitrary formula for their economy-wrecking trade war and tried using fancy-looking math to cover it up