How is "worth of goods" calculated with reference to tariffs?

[Stephen Tashi]

Lately there are many news stories about a tariff being put on a certain "worth of goods". How is "worth of goods" calculated? For example if the tariff was put on , say, pickles, would the "worth" of pickles be computed as the total value of pickles imported in a year before the tariff? Or would it be calculated based on sales over a shorter time period? Or would it simply be the price of a ton of pickles - or one jar of pickles?

 

[Vanadium 50]

When you bought the pickles you are importing, you paid a certain price. The duty is based on that price.

 

[Vanadium 50]

And who'd have thunk it, but the US is a net exporter of pickles, with a trade surplus of $2.3M.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

When you bought the pickles you are importing, you paid a certain price. The duty is based on that price.

My question isn't about how tariffs are assessed on goods. The question is about attempts to quantify the scope of new tariffs. When a news story says (new) tariffs were imposed on "75 billion dollars worth of goods", I think it's attempting to quantify the scope of tariffs in the future, not say that tariffs were imposed retroactively on past transactions.

 

[Vanadium 50]

That's done the same way. The US imports $60M worth of pickles per year. This is the sum of all the invoices from people who bought foreign-produced pickles. If a pickle tariff is passed, it applies to $60M of pickles annually.