Tariff: The well-travelled Arabic term that became a byword for isolationism

middleeasteye.net

6 pointsQem3 comments

Very interesting. I didn't know that!

>>The root for ta’rif is ‘arafa, which means "to know". (from TFA)

It's interesting that in the Portuguese world [like Brazil] there is still a document in logistics called "Conhecimento" == "Knowledge".

It is also a brutal historical irony that the arguably main tenet of capitalism, "Laissez faire, laissez passer", has been destroyed from the inside [Trump].

I am reminded of Lenin's dictum: ‘The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.’ -And wonder if it applies to populist leaders as well as the soviets.

I think about Musk/Bezos/Zuckerberg quite a lot in this context. They hitched their wagon to the Trump train, and now they are hoist on their own petard.

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