Yeah, it really is that absurd.
As you might have guessed this formula does the most harm to poor/over-exploited/developing countries which export large amounts of cheap products to the US, but have weak consumer economies that can't realistically support buying much from the US. This is why Viet Nam is possibly facing the worst of it, due in part to the big currency gap with the VND, but also because we have capital controls (big W) which work like a check-valve here which make it difficult for money to be sucked out of the economy.
This is literally the reward these countries get for selling cheap coffee and rice to an empire that wants to import cheap coffee and rice because they can't even produce it themselves. I do suspect this new trade war is a mostly a bully tactic to bring people to the table to negotiate to buy more US products, but 1) the US produces fuck all and 2) does the US really fucking think this will make Cambodian people start importing Cybertrucks? Does it not even occur to anyone in the US how unrealistic that is?
Death to amerikkka.