Strategic tariffs can be useful for lots of reasons. Protecting a culturally important industry, supporting certain values in that industry that aren’t respected in other countries, maintaining an industry that is important to national security (e.g., domestic steel production) that would be difficult to ramp up in an emergency if the domestic industry collapses in the face of foreign competition.

The inherent tradeoff is that there will be retaliation by the tariff recipient on some other industry in your country; you basically accept a detriment for one domestic industry to gain a benefit for another.

But blanket tariffs are just stupid. There are lots of industries for which it will never be cheaper to produce locally than in low-wage countries in East or Southeast Asia and that are the kinds of jobs most industrialized nation workers just aren’t interested in doing. Companies will simply pass that tariff onto consumers instead of investing massive capital and spending much more on labor to relocate domestically.

People will buy less of everything because it’s suddenly way more expensive. Companies will sell less and have to lay people off. Blanket tariffs are effectively a regressive tax increase that directly impacts economic growth.

This may help

https://youtu.be/24ib5pMkprY?t=95

I saw a comment on YouTube a few weeks ago that I think perfectly captures the mindset of the people who scream about the “woke mind virus”.

The comment was something like “I never had a problem trusting a minority surgeon, but now they’re all woke DEI hires and I can’t trust any of them.”

In other words, “I had no problem with minority surgeons when there were almost none of them because I had to accept that there were a handful of ‘good ones’ that worked hard and earned it. But now that I’m seeing more of them, I know lots of the ‘bad ones’ are getting in that could only get in because it was handed to them because of their skin color.”

In these people’s minds, 95% of white people are “good ones” and 95% of minorities are “bad ones”. So if any respectable job has more than a few percent of minorities, the only logical conclusion for them is that there are lots of “bad ones” getting jobs they aren’t qualified for and didn’t earn.

I’m partial to the War of Jenkins’ Ear myself

I don’t know about firstest, but he was definitely firster. That’s why they call him a founding father, not a founding fathest.

I have a pact with the spiders in my house. If I spot them running across the floor or on the ceiling or tucked away in a corner, they’re not bothering me, so I won’t bother them. If I see one in an inconvenient place like the dinner table or hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room, I gently relocate them outdoors.

But…if I’m lying in bed trying to go to sleep and I feel one crawling up my arm, it’s broken the pact, and it can’t be trusted to leave me alone anymore, so it gets a quick and painless death.

I was once very eagerly awaiting a FedEx package that required a signature. I basically looked out the window every 30 seconds to make sure I didn’t miss him.

5 or 6 o’clock rolls around and I get a notification that the package could not be delivered because “the business was closed”. I lived in a rural area with no businesses for several miles, and I’m certainly not a business. The driver clearly just decided he didn’t want to deliver any more packages that day and just made up bullshit excuses for the remaining packages.

I contacted FedEx support and it was exactly as everyone knows it to be. “I’m so sorry that was your experience! Now go away.”

It was delivered the next day.