Who put the tiff in tariffs?

Play time is over, Don.

The Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that the Trump administration must facilitate the release of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a US green card holder, who was wrongly deported to a prison in El Salvador. Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, met with Donald Trump after the court ruling, and the two agreed to not obey the court’s orders. The case has come to symbolize Trump’s defiance of courts, and willingness to deport even American permanent residents without due process. In a press conference after the meeting, Bukele told reporters that he had shared many other similar tips with Trump on running a vibrant democracy. “For example, I told Trump that he could deport the entire state of Maine to El Salvador and didn’t need anyone’s permission to do that.” In turn, Trump praised Bukele saying, “He kinda looks like a drug cartel Don, doesn’t he? I don’t know how to say his name, but I think he is a fine man.”

The Trump administration sent Harvard University a letter demanding a list of changes, which included bringing in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is “viewpoint diverse.” Two days, Harvard refused to accede to the demands, prompting federal officials to freeze about 2 billion dollars in funding to the university. Harvard University released a terse statement saying, “We intensely regret this recent turn of events. Unfortunately, we can’t accede to the demands. The best we can do is to invite Mel Gibson to teach an antisemitism workshop at Harvard.”

In the meanwhile, historians from Harvard, Yale and Brown continued to quibble over the exact definition of a concentration camp. A spokesman for the Ivy League described the nitpicking as a sign of vibrant and healthy academic freedom in America. “When you’re splitting hairs over what makes a concentration camp versus a gulag or deciding between whether to call something a genocide or a small-scale pogrom, it all adds up to something good for our democracy. Until we get these distinctions right, it is impossible make progress on such issues.”

The Federal Government opened its antitrust trial against Meta this week, accusing the company of having cemented a monopoly when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. The government argued that this has deprived consumers of other social networking options and stifled competition. A US Department of Justice spokesperson said, “We are determined to provide citizens with hundreds and thousands of sites onto which they can upload their photos, which can be easily manipulated and misused by bad people with AI imaging software to create pornographic images.” The US Department of Justice also filed a separate suit against Mark Zuckerberg in a Washington DC court claiming that he was “an extraterrestrial alien sent to spy on the human race.”

The highest court of the United Kingdom ruled this week that trans women do not fall under the legal definition of women under the country’s equality legislation. The judgement found that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex and applies only to the precise interpretation of the country’s 2010 anti-discrimination law. Experts say that the ruling is likely to make it difficult for trans women to find public bathrooms that they can use. Elon Musk hailed the judgement and called on transgender people to “hold it in.”

Who put the tiff in tariff?

Unless you’ve been hiding out in a cave under a rock, you’ve probably heard the word tariff way more often in the last few weeks than you’d prefer. Until about a month ago, the ordinary American had not even heard the word. Now, plumbers and software engineers alike have become experts on it. Thanks to the Donald, who has self-confessedly been dreaming about imposing tariffs on all 206 countries in the world since the tender age of 41, the United States has embarked on a suicidal mission “to restructure international trade order, bring our jobs back and make America great again.”

Howard Lutnick, US Commerce Secretary, who would comfortably decrease the average IQ of a smallish group of dodos, thinks we should be making tee shirts, shoes, iPads and such by letting Americans “put in those millions of screws that go into all sorts of things. Right now, the Chinese are putting in all the screws. We should be the ones with the screwdrivers.” Boy, oh boy. Have we ended up with the inmates running the asylum or what.

First, no one wants to sew tee shirts. Even the Bangladeshis don’t want to do this. They do it only because they don’t have a choice. If they could find better jobs, they would not do it. All we Americans want is to buy tee shirts for 20 bucks or less and throw them away when the slogans on them become problematic or when we’ve gained twenty pounds. Second, no one wants to make iPads. Even Chinese adults don’t want these jobs. They make their kids build iPads. Why are we trying to make a full-grown American adult do the job of a Chinese tween?

Shouldn’t we be focusing our energies on uploading photos to twenty different apps, building new bathrooms and arguing if a gulag can technically exist in a tropical country like El Salvador? Also, the way Trump is going, we might all have to soon become lawyers to defend ourselves. Whatever it is that we could or should be doing, I don’t see sewing tee shirts and shoes or assembling iPads on that list. Bringing crap jobs back to America at a time when AI is going to take all the jobs is like trying to choose which swimsuit to wear when a tsunami is headed directly at us.

A long time ago, the Don wrote a book called “The Art of the Deal,” in which he described his recipe for business success. An example of his sage advice is “The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people's fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That's why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It's an innocent form of exaggeration, and a very effective form of promotion." Here’s a tip, Don. America is already a great product. You don’t need to hype it. All you need to do is to not eff it up by imagining weird problems with it. America is not one of your ex-wives. And, don’t get into fights with our neighbors and friends. Where’s the fun in being rich and great all by ourselves, if we have no friends or family to share it with?

Also, if you’re gonna do tariffs, pick a number and stick to it. This is not a Wheel of Tariffs where you can spin a wheel and get a random number. Importantly, don’t screw around with penguins. Someday when we’re all six feet under water, we might need them.

Stop effing around, Don. Play time is over. Chop, chop. Get to some real work.