No More Tariff Talk

I'm out of things to say. Yes, you heard that right, I'm speechless (at least on this topic).

I'm done talking about tariffs.

I apologize to any who may have taken my posts or retorts as ungentlemanly, but I calls them as I sees them - always accepting that I could be wrong. I am, after all, the victim of a Mississippi public school education.

But I need to point out a few things before I stop chewing the cud on a few things:

1. As we sit here today, America is technically insolvent and right on the edge of functional bankruptcy. As Hemingway wrote about one of his characters, we got into our situation gradually, and then suddenly. This is the suddenly part.

2. The debt is unsustainable and just the interest on the debt is chewing up a majority of our budget - as of today - and the miracle of compound interest is not our friend. It will only get worse if we do nothing.

3. Massive amounts of both taxpayer AND borrowed money have been wasted or stolen. DOGE proves that. That is money sucked out of our economy for no economic benefit.

4. We got here through the actions (and inactions) of cowardly presidents, elected officials and politicians (of both parties) refusing to acknowledge just how dire our situation is and simply propping up a national economy with borrowing and spending that only a Keynesian could love.

5. In my opinion, any economic growth from around 2000 through today is based on nothing but pot smoke. America has been on a contact high for 25 years as industries bled away from this country and its economy. It reached a crescendo during the Biden administration - I believe a strong case can be made that most employment gains (net of recovered Covid jobs) came through federal hiring and any economic gains rested on federal spending.

6. All of this was 50% hidden behind meaningless cultural battles that were based on stupid, illogical and/or irrational theories that were treated as facts, the other 50% was selling the public that things will always be the way they are today when history has proven both of those to be wrong.

7. Nobody with any power, and I mean nobody, has come forward with any plans or actions to even begin to try to turn this around - except President Trump - and he has been slowed by District Court judges with delusions of grandeur.

8. The same argument being factually made about how tariffs raise prices can be made about taxes, the interest on the debt and inflationary policies - but those are like the weather - everybody talks about them, but nobody ever does anything.

9. I'm not for tariffs, per se, I am for incentives for the return of industries. My arguments are directed to anything that might facilitate that. There can be no argument that significant weaknesses in our industrial base were revealed during the aftermath of Covid that to ignore would represent malpractice on a historical and catastrophic scale.

10. I do believe this is all about negotiation - while I, like most of the huddled masses, have been thinking it has to do with international trade, the idea hit me last night that I might be looking at this all wrong. I am considering the possibility that the tariffs are an internal negotiation tool to scare the shit out of Democrats in order to get them to support elimination of the tariffs in exchange for completely cancelling corporate taxes and to agree to a package of policy changes that make investments in core industries more attractive. This is a classic example of the prisoner's dilemma.The prisoner's dilemma is a game theory thought experiment involving two rational agents, each of whom can either cooperate for mutual benefit or betray their partner for individual gain. The dilemma arises from the fact that while defecting is rational for each agent, cooperation yields a higher payoff for each.

Now that I have said my piece, it is my turn to shut up.

We can argue about this till the cows come home, but the tariffs are what they are, and they are in place, however they were calculated. Congress still has the power to legislate them out of existence, so there is no constitutional crisis. Checks and balances, Article I vs. Article II vs. Article III.

The Republic is safe.

I'm still going to wait and see; while knowing this is a very dangerous, high stakes game with only two possible outcomes - somebody wins and somebody loses. I'm betting on us being the former rather than the latter.