Welcome to Tariffland! Can’t you just feel the impending greatness of it all? So here we go down the rabbit hole… TFG (The Felonious Guy) released his tariff program that included most of the world, including islands with no human inhabitants and another with only a US military base. And nothing for Russia, of course.
It’s comforting to know that this program was so well
thought out and agonizingly constructed.
Hah.
We went grocery shopping this past weekend, and the prices haven’t seemed to change drastically. However, they may only be applying the price increase to new shipments as they come in. I bet it’s hard to reprice a whole grocery store.
The car industry is different. Sweetpea and I were out
buying a new car the previous weekend. It wasn’t because of the tariffs; it
just happened to be the weekend we penciled car shopping into our calendar a
month earlier to replace her old beater. Our timing was fortuitous. The car
salesperson told us that when the tariffs are officially announced, every car
on the lot will increase in price. Most will rise by 25%; the model we wanted
would go up by 40%.
I was astounded and perturbed that they would apply the
new tariffed price on cars already on the lot, which should have been
unaffected by the new pricing. I think the new car business was trying to make
a maximum impact to provide the biggest shock, with hopes to get the Idiot in
Charge to back down in the face of protest. But that won’t happen. Not only
doesn’t he care about what peons like us think, but he’ll never admit he’s wrong,
especially about something to which he’s pinned his reputation.
I think that unless the tariffs disappear within the
month, we’d better get used to the new pricing in our new reality because it’s not
going back.
Look at what happened with the
COVID/Supply Chain problems of 2020-2022. Consumer prices skyrocketed, but then, once the supply crunch was over, the prices stayed put. We were conditioned to
pay the new rates, and the business owners certainly weren’t eager to mute their
new profits. Republicans rode to power on the misconception that President
Biden was to blame for high prices. So do you really think that down the road,
once this situation returns to something normal, everyone is just going to
slash prices? Nah. It will take years and probably some legislation for that,
and we know that about half the pols won’t lift a finger because it would be
bad for the rich donor class.
Another angle is the purported purpose of the tariffs: to
bring back American manufacturing.
This is a pipe dream. Even if companies wanted to pull
out of foreign nations and build new factories here, and that’s a HUGE “if,” it
would take years to come to fruition.
And what if they did? There’s a reason they exist
overseas, and that’s because the labor is cheap. If they build here, who’s going
to do these jobs, and for how much? If they pay a livable wage, enough to
entice average Americans to do these jobs, the resulting cost of the product
would soar. And if they find a way to make it legal to pay skut-wages, they’re also
driving out all the immigrants who might have taken the jobs.
Is the objective to make things so dire that people have
no choice but to take two or three low-paying jobs just to get by?
No matter how this shakes out, we’re going to be paying
this tab for a long time.
The most realistic projection I’ve heard is that TFG is “open
for business” regarding negotiations over reducing the tariffs. That totally
tracks because it becomes a “What’s in it
for me?” situation. And no one embodies “What’s in it for me?” more than the Current Occupant.
Meanwhile, our former trade partners are making deals
elsewhere, and we’re about to find out that America may not be as indispensable
as we think. Maybe it will be the entire world’s ill will toward us that will
keep us warm at night.
***
I loved seeing all the Hands Off protests from around the country. It’s a shame I didn’t see a word about it in the local newspaper Sunday or today. They’re still trying hard to keep the Orange Shyster propped up in the news. Look at this clipping from Sunday:
This is what they think is a front-page story: The
President’s poll number had risen four points before his tariffs were
announced. So… there!
They don’t mention any polling done afterward, nor do
they mention that the polling is from the conservative-leaning Daily Mail. They also claim his status rose 6 points with Democrats, which I absolutely do
not believe. It’s another puff piece, plain and simple. (And for shit like
this, I pay $5.50 for the Sunday edition.)
But… back to the protests. I saw a lot of wonderful
signs, but these two were my favorites and will no doubt reside on my sidebar
for months to come:
Science!
***
Lastly, RIP to Val Kilmer, who passed last week (right
after I dropped my last post. I enjoyed reading all the blogged tributes. But
out of all the big screen reminiscences, only Lawyers, Guns, and Money even mentioned my favorite
of his movies, Top Secret.
Top Secret was a comedy made by the Airplane guys. I
believe it came after Airplane but before Naked Gun and Hot Shots. It was a
spoof of Elvis and WWII movies, featuring, as you’d expect, 90 minutes of sight
gags, wordplay, satire, and 4th wall breaking.
I remember seeing the trailer for it during the previews
before another movie and almost choking from laughter. I couldn’t wait to see
it, but alas, it was a very early preview. The movie didn’t come out for like
another 6-8 months. But boy, it was worth it.
For some reason, it seems like very few people have seen
it. I can’t count how many times I’ve had conversations with people about how
much we loved Airplane, but then they’d never heard of Top Secret.
This was Val Kilmer’s first film, and he played an
Elvis-like character caught up with the French Resistance in WWII Germany. Don’t
feel like you have to know Elvis movies to appreciate this one. I’d never seen
a single one and it was fine. Of course, years later, I dated a girl who loved Elvis movies so I saw one or two.
She never understood why I was laughing my ass off though, when I finally saw
the source material for various scenes.
Anyway, if you like the Airplane/Naked Gun-style comedies, or would like to see a young, vital, rock star-playing Val Kilmer, check out Top Secret. You can find it on YouTube.
2 comments:
It is Economic vandalism going on, but he just had a Press Conference where of coarse he stroked his own Ego about how nobody else has ever had the Courage to do what he's done, etcetera. There's a reason nobody else has done it... it's chaotic and reckless.
Maybe it's from that time he stared straight into an eclipse...
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