Apr
10
2025

Two Snarky Tariff Tweets

Number One:

And number two:

And (via Slashdot) just the headline of this MacRumors article sets my blood a-boilin': Trump: Apple Building in China is 'Unsustainable,' Could Exempt Some Companies From Tariffs.

How noisy will Tim Cook's smooch on Trump's posterior need to be to snag that exemption?

Don't think Elizabeth Warren isn't taking lessons from this, awaiting her 2029 chance at making up the Calvinball rules.

Also of note:

  • I'm not a Democrat, obviously. But Jeff Maurer is, so translate his headline accordingly: Should Democrats Take the Free Win We've Been Gifted, or Hop Aboard a Death Ship? (And my answer is: Gee, I hope the latter.)

    Suppose it’s May 7, 1937, the day after the Hindenburg disaster. People are shocked by the gruesome horror captured on camera, and remember: These are 1930s people, who are used to seeing folks get crushed in bizarre industrial accidents and kicked through the side of a barn by a horse — their threshold for being horrified is high. Would you come out that day and issue this statement?

    The Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company’s rigid airship design has been chaotic and inconsistent, but slow-moving, cloth-covered aircraft filled with flammable gas are still a great way to travel. I reject the consensus by so-called “experts” that Zeppelins aren’t safe; rigid airships are the future, and we should invest in better, more passenger-friendly designs so that you and your family can float slowly in a giant condom filled with gaseous death for decades to come.

    You might issue that statement if you were the head of a rigid airship company. Of course, you also might not — you might have divested from your company and hopped on a flight to Aruba in a fixed wing aircraft before the last flaming corpse even hit the ground — but maybe you’d issue that statement. What you would absolutely not do is issue that statement if you ran an airplane company. But, if for some inexplicable reason, you did issue that statement, what would obviously, unmistakably, categorically never, ever happen is for your words to be amplified by the Alliance of Fixed-Wing Aircraft Manufacturers. That would be such an astounding fuckup that everyone involved in the decision should have to explain themselves, with any explanation that doesn’t start with “I was extremely high” leading to immediate termination.

    Jeff posts video from Democrat Representative Chris Deluzio, it's at the link, and the Hindenberg analogy is pretty apt.

  • Musk is unfair to that sack of bricks. Eric Boehm points out some dissension in the ranks: Elon Musk says Peter Navarro is 'dumber than a sack of bricks'

    Imagine an alternate reality where President Donald Trump's top trade adviser was a bulging Hefty trash bag stuffed with discarded bricks.

    No, really. Picture it. When Trump gathers his cabinet together for an important meeting, inexplicably, there is a large bag sitting in the corner of the room. Its black polyethylene sides stretch at awkward angles as it tries to contain the sharp edges of what appear to be dozens of bricks piled within. Some red clay dust that has escaped from the drawstring top lingers on the floor. A White House intern struggles to move it from place to place. The bag doesn't speak or communicate in any way. It has no thoughts. It does not opine on the meaning of trade deficits or invent false data to tell misleading stories about the state of America's economy.

    And then ask yourself: Would the country be better off if Trump was seeking counsel from that literal sack of bricks rather than from Peter Navarro?

    Eric makes the ultimate Reason slam against Navarro:

    Navarro might be part of the MAGA tribe now, but he's still a socialist at heart. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he waxed poetic about how "beautiful" it was to see "the power of the federal government merging with the power of private enterprise." His vision for America's trade policy is the sort of autarky that would make Vladimir Lenin proud.

    It's nice to fantasize Trump warming up that Apprentice line: "Yer fired."

  • This is the blog too busy to hate. But David R. Henderson makes a valid language point when asking: What Is a Hater?

    When I grew up, we used the word “hater” to describe someone who hates. Seems obvious, right?

    But now the meaning has evolved. At first, it seemed to mean someone who was angry at someone. I’m often angry at people; I rarely hate those same people.

    Now it seems to have evolved further to mean someone who is critical of someone or even critical of just the person’s ideas or actions. I saw an instance of this in an X by Utah Senator Mike Lee recently. He wrote:

    What will Trump’s haters do if his tariff play brings country after country to the negotiating table, resulting in bilateral trade agreements that make U.S. trade more free than ever?

    Maybe Lee was referring to Trump’s actual haters, of whom there are millions. Who knows what they would do? They would probably keep hating.

    Somehow, though, I have the uncomfortable feeling that Senator Lee would include me among the haters, simply because I’m strongly critical of Trump’s unilateral imposition of tariffs. By the way, if Trump’s policies worked the way Lee’s conditional states, I would be happy. I would still be upset that Trump violated treaties to impose those tariffs. Not only the ends, but also the means to those ends, matter. But I would still be happy with the outcome, assuming that Trump didn’t change his mind later. (Remember what he did after renegotiating NAFTA and getting USMCA. Although he thought he had achieved “a colossal victory,” he has now abrogated the treaty.)

    I'm probably guilty of ascribing Bad Psychology as a primary cause of peoples' acts and words I disagree with. My April 10 resolution: criticize actions, not imagined mental states.

    (Arguably, I broke that resolution already in quoting that Conor Friedersdorf tweet. Oops.)


Last Modified 2025-04-11 5:34 AM EDT