John Oliver Brutally Mocks Trump For ‘Shooting The Economy In The Dick’ With ‘Ridiculous’ Tariff Scheme

HBO host John Oliver brutally mocked President Donald Trump for “shooting the economy in the dick” with a tariff scheme based on a “ridiculous” formula.

Trump announced a tariff program last week, which included an elaborate chart listing what Trump says the U.S. is being “charged” by other countries and a corresponding “Discounted Reciprocal Tariff” for each country.

But Fox Business Network host Larry Kudlow and others have criticized the formula that Trump used to arrive at those values, which produced the tariffs that touched off a stock market crisis.

On this week’s edition of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, Oliver lampooned Trump and his tariff event as “shooting the economy in the dick,” and raised a similar point about trade deficits to the one Kudlow made when he interviewed Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: This will be indeed the Golden Age of America. It’s coming back.

JOHN OLIVER: If you mean golden age, the way we tend to describe the last decade before an old person dies, then yes, it feels like we are very much in the golden age of America right now. Thank you.

Now, to explain his tariffs, Trump helpfully brought along a fun visual aid.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think you can, for the most part, see it. Those with good eyes, with bad eyes. We didn’t want to bring — it’s very windy out here. We didn’ want to bring out the big charts because it had no chance of standing.

Fortunately, we came armed with a little smaller chart.

JOHN OLIVER: That is smart, and it shows they really thought of everything that might go wrong while announcing their plan to shoot the economy in the dick.

Although, I will point out, if wind was a problem there, and we checked with experts on this, the White House does have an inside part.

Unfortunately, that chart is ridiculous for a number of reasons. For one thing, it features an estimate of tariffs charged to the USA by other countries that no one could figure out until a financial journalist realized it was just… how much we export to that country, minus how much we import from them, divided by how much we import, which is just stunningly dumb because those things have nothing to do with tariffs.

It’d be like trying to figure out the square footage of your home by dividing your phone number by your dog’s age or taking your temperature by measuring your head’s distance to the sun. It’s not going to get you the answer that you’re looking for.

Now, the White House disputed that claim, releasing this more complicated-looking equation they said they’d used.

But people quickly pointed out that one symbol meant exports, one meant imports.

And the other two numbers were variable set at four and one-quarter, so they canceled each other out, meaning it’s the same stupid equation everyone said it was in the first place!

And look, we all knew it was a matter of time before this show became me literally teaching you math. I’m just surprised it took us 12 seasons…

Watch above via HBO’s Last Week Tonight.