On August 6, the good people of Winnsboro, S.C., learned what it means to be a part of Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro’s GDP “rounding error.” That was the day consumer electronics producer Element Electronics gave notice to 126 people that, because of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on components from China, the plant would begin layoffs in October.

Earlier in the summer, in a CNBC White House interview about the potentially harmful effects of tariffs, Navarro claimed that China and the United States are massive economies and the tariffs are just peanuts by comparison: “We got two economies that add up to around U.S. $30 trillion in annual GDP. The amount of trade we’re affecting with the tariffs is a rounding error compared to that.”