That Tariff Shit Sure Was Pointless
Time to take the gun out of the toddler's hand
***Hey there! I’m excited to announce that I’ll be doing some live shows next month with Jesse Singal of the excellent Blocked and Reported podcast. Jesse is a journalist, a funny guy, and a man who seems to make both the left fringe and right fringe of social media lose their fucking minds, which I think is a sign of good character. We’ll be doing two live shows that are a mix of comedy and current events — here are the details:
We did one of these shows in Chicago last year, and it was a lot of fun — the joint Blocked and Reported/I Might Be Wrong crowd is not quite the bunch of agoraphobic freaks you’d expect. We hope you can make it!
Yesterday evening, I had today’s column written: It was about how strange is was that tariffs were in effect on Canada but not Mexico because of “fentanyl”, even though Canada sends less fentanyl to the US each year than can currently be found on Iggy Pop’s tour bus. The column had witty barbs and trenchant insights and a solid joke about Canada promising that The Love Guru would never again appear on American screens. And then, around dinnertime, Trump struck a deal with Canada, and tariffs on both countries were paused. So now, I’m rush-ordering a column when I should be ignoring my son and playing Helldivers 2.
It’s my own fault for not betting the farm that Trump would reach some bullshit “deal” with Canada. I knew this scenario was possible — that’s what The Love Guru joke was about. But it turns out that Trump got something even less valuable than protecting American eyes from Mike Myers making poop and hockey jokes in a subcontinental accent — he got this:
If you’re thinking “what $1.3 billion border plan?”, well, first: How dare you not be up-to-date on the finer points of Canadian interior policy, you boorish American. But second: Trudeau is talking about this plan that was announced back in December — it gives their border police more equipment and hats with even-stiffer-brims and stuff. So, Trump got Canada to agree to do a thing that they already planned to do. Also, there will be a joint US-Canadian fentanyl task force, which makes me happy because it gives me an opportunity to post this:
Of course, this was the second pissant non-concession of the day that Trump “extracted”. Earlier, Mexico had agreed to send 10,000 troops to the US border, which Twitter clowns and Fox News hacks hailed as the greatest diplomatic masterstroke since Niccolò Machiavelli proved that the fastest route to power and wealth is to make college kids buy your book for 500 years. Of course, Biden got Mexico to do the exact same thing in 2021 without damaging American credibility or threatening to nuke the North American economy — here’s an AP article from four years ago:
Less than a week ago, Trump was arguing that tariffs were good in their own right: He said that they were not a negotiating tool, called them “pure economic”, and then justified them by rambling about trade deficits. If that was true, then why did he just lift them in exchange for the equivalent of 10 cents off a jar of Turtle Wax? Could it have something to do with the Dow plunging 600 points before the Mexico deal was announced? Of course, concessions will only get weaker as countries get wise to Trump’s game — the European round of Trump’s Tariff Blackmail Tour will probably net us a couple of pinecones and a VHS copy of The Best of Mr. Bean. Meanwhile, Trump is trashing American credibility and injecting uncertainty into the global economy.
Also: None of this is legal. The law that Trump claims empowers him to levy tariffs without Congress is a 1977 law that lets the president impose financial sanctions in response to a national emergency. Trump is interpreting that to mean that he can do whatever he wants as long as he mumbles “something something fentanyl” while he does it. It’s likely that the courts would rule against him, but it’s more likely that everything will play out before the courts can weigh in, and in fact, that’s what just happened. Justice is just blind, and she’s also slower than a Sting orgasm, which is a problem.
At this point, nobody should fool themselves into thinking that Trump is playing eight-dimensional chess on tariffs. Or, if he is playing eight-dimensional chess, he really sucks at it: He’s lost most of his pieces, he’s bleeding from the ears, and he has a bishop stuck up his nose. The clear reality is that he’s a very dumb man who thinks that running a trade deficit means you’re losing, and he’s sowing chaos that’s having small negative effects now and might have large negative effects later. He’s a toddler running around waving a gun, and — hot take ahead! — I think we should take the gun out of his hand.
Congress can do that by making the president get congressional approval to implement tariffs. This would affirm the power that Congress already has according to Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, but since Trump is interpreting the 1977 law as a blank check, we need a new law that says “nice try, but no”. That bill exists, and Congress should pass it, partly to keep Trump from doing something crazy, and partly as a retro throwback to a time when Congress passed laws and mattered. The tariffs against Canada and Mexico were completely pointless, and that’s good news: That was the best possible outcome of this ridiculous mess. Next time, we might not be so lucky.
Is the GOP the Stupid Party Forever Now?
A blurb from Bill Maher’s book went viral on Twitter this week. In my opinion, that virality — like the virality of this person poking their fingers into a capybara’s nostrils — was entirely justified. Because I think that Maher hit the nail on the head here:
Trump isn't playing eight-dimensional chess but he knows exactly what he's doing and got exactly what he wanted, an easy victory that he his cronies can crow about in the news cycle. Before the week is out you will see multiple articles in media outlets such as the Free Press praising Trump for his "bold and aggressive" leadership on tariffs. That he was right all along. That he has once again bent the world to his will, gotten results and that this is why America reelected him and loves him. There will be so much fawning and ass kissing that it will make you sick. But that's exactly why he did this.
Of all the things that Trump is bad at, he might be the worst at diplomacy.