It wasn't a "rumor" it was explicit deliberate disinformation. Unfortunately many people in the US have insufficient education and accurate news feeds to realize.

See also: disinformation that "other countries charge us the same tariffs", which turns out to be either a plain lie, or they mean VAT (a sales tax, like we have in the US).

Here's Trump's claims debunked in detail: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/08/recapping-trumps-deceptive...

"But we found that Trump’s so-called “reciprocal” tariff rates weren’t based on tariffs that other countries charged on goods coming from the U.S. Instead, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative came up with the rates by dividing the size of a country’s trade imbalance with the U.S. in goods by how much America imports in goods from that nation. "