The fact we still have to explain what a tariff is because the president of the United States keeps lying about what a tariff is (and nobody in his circle bothers to call out his lies) pretty much summarizes the current state of the country.
Normally we presume having a proper word for a thing is more descriptive, but in this case because people aren't used to the idea: maybe being more verbose is the answer.
That’s where the term “duty free” that you see in airports comes from.
But I guess until a certain influential individual started lying about tariffs, this wasn’t really necessary because no one was really confused about who paid the tariffs, because the people who knew about them clearly knew it was the importers paid for them and the people who didn’t understand how they worked had no reason to be confused because everyone who did would clearly explain that importers paid them.
Gotta earn some bucks on that salmon going to Japan.
[1]: https://www.toll.no/no/varer/fisk/eksport-av-fisk/eksportavg...
Not only that, they double down!
There is this press conference with Karoline Leavitt where she claims that tarriffs are a "tax hike on foreign countries" and the reporter tries to explain to her that tarriffs are paid by the importer. She then acts insulted that he would dare to "test her economic knowledge". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYj9yyo8Tk0
I mean, these people apparently have a university degree. I don't believe they don't know what a tarriff is. But how can you be comfortable saying such stupid shit in front of a world audience?
It's simple. The way democracy works is that if you get 51% of votes (or something like that), you have absolute power. This means that the most effective strategy to "win" is to find some social group that happens to be 51% of the whole society, and focus on them. Actually, you don't need that. You need 51% of votes, not nation-wide support, so if your social group happens to vote more actively than the rest, you can win the election despite having minority support. Or you can use quirks of the voting system (gerrymandering, electoral college, etc.) to your advantage.
And guess what social group is at least 51% of the whole society, easy to control, and won't mind you wrecking the country? Stupid and poor people combined. Stupid people are the majority and can be easily manipulated. Poor people can't lose anything, so they're willing to vote for any change whatsoever. By convincing the majority of stupid and poor people to vote for you, which is easy as long as you forgo your personal honor, you're pretty much guaranteed to win.
The bottom line is, when a politician says something that isn't logical, it's not because they're uneducated, it's because their target audience isn't expecting logical arguments, but rather emotional ones. They're not addressing an intelligent conversation partner, they're addressing an elderly with dementia. There are seven million boomers with Alzheimer's in the US. And 1,5 million college teachers. It makes zero sense to focus on the latter group, if the former group is four times larger. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates the point.
Source: this is how the "gays spread ADHD and 5G" party won election in my country. The good news is that after eight years they lost the majority in the parliament, but they still remain a monument to the monumental collective stupidity of my nation.
https://maa.org/math-values/how-low-can-the-popular-vote-go/
This nonsense that "I won the election so I have a mandate from the majority of the American people to do as I please" is just not accurate.
However, it's possible that mistakes have been made inadvertently. The stock market is down 5 trillion dollars, and the president must be very busy using his business prowess to deal with the situation (just like he did when he turned his casinos around).
EDITED:
Trump had six or seven bankruptcies, not Biden.
It seems like a lot of people are saying that Trump is a very chaotic and incompetent person who doesn't know how to manage money. Trump's leadership has already caused the stock market to lose five trillion dollars in value since the start of his term.
Biden doesn't have any bankruptcies or personal scandals. Biden didn't pay off an adult film start before the 2016 election. That was Trump too. And Biden wasn't convicted of 34 felonies either. That was also Trump.
It's weird because Trump promised to bring down prices on day 1, but I it sure doesn't look like he knows what he's doing. Or maybe Trump is a liar and a demagogue. Please take the 'demagogue' bit with a grain of salt, I hate to even seem inflammatory.
The deal with these tariffs is the flip flopping, the high rates, the probable corrupt behind doors and under the table deals on where they are applied and where they aren't, etc.
This might be of interest:
Why Trump’s tariffs are better than you think — and much worse
subscribe! https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/03/06/donald-trump-tariffs-im...
or read now, maybe subscribe later: https://archive.md/H46RG
From an outside PoV a disturbing fact of the Trump tariffs is they were put in force by executive order (OK), they were appealed for review (OK), there's a law that requires that appeal for review to be heard within a specific short time frame (OK) ... and recently the US Republicans passed a rider that offically " Stops Time " wrt to the passage of days to review Trump's tariffs ...
~ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43358343
That's a bit weird, surely?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eBcRYmk88jw
Not for the lack of trying. There have been more than a handful of Libertarian city takeovers and sea-steading projects, and they all end in similar, predictable ways. The sea-steader/new country declarations fail to defend "their" territory against an actual military, and the libertarian towns run out of money and/or people willing to live in a free-for-all society without common services.