4 is less than 0 apparently according to US Trade Representative

Note: After publishing the post, turns out $\epsilon < 0$ could be correct, but $\epsilon$ should have been -4 instead.

A friend shared with me the recent and infamous Math equation that has trade and economic experts scratching their head:

\[\Delta \tau_i = \frac{x_i - m_i}{\epsilon \varphi m_i}\]

I am not going to discuss about poltics nor my opinions about the use of this equation. Nor will I discuss about the equation itself, there’s plenty of journalists, economists, and mathematicians who could comment more on this. I will instead be talking about a contradiction that appears in their website taken on April 7 2025:

This is a typo because what they probably wanted to say is that $\epsilon > 0$ because they either introduced a contradiction or stating that $4 < 0$ during their calculations:

If $\epsilon < 0$ and $\epsilon = 4$ then that would imply that $\epsilon = 4 < 0$ which is a contradiction. It would be mean of me to pick on the administration for this apparent contradiction since typos do happen, even to professionals. Though the story would be different if this contradiction with $\epsilon$ impacted the lives of others. I’m not saying this formula does not have large impact on others, I’m trying to say that their typo stating $\epsilon < 0$ is unlikely to cause chaos. What does not make sense to me is how no one in the Trade Representive office bothered to correct this contradiction yet.