I do not think that the government's formula is an appropriate way to think about reciprocal tariffs. And it is unclear what the note references or doesn’t from my research with Cavallo et al. But I believe our work suggests the value for the “elasticity of import prices to
USTR: "The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25. The recent experience with U.S. tariffs on China has demonstrated that tariff passthrough to retail prices was low (Cavallo et al, 2021)."
Cavallo et al: φ is 0.945.
aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…
