Woke Tariffs

Wherein the United States suffers an outbreak of Critical Trade Theory

The great argument playing out in the media right now about the relative value and ethical implications of reciprocal tariffs is not relevant. It is not relevant because these tariffs are not reciprocal tariffs in any measurable way. They aren’t reciprocal, they aren’t sensible, and the justification for them is Woke in every sense of the word. Let’s take a close look at what we might call Critical Trade Theory, back our way into an understanding of what a woke tariff is and how this is definitely that, and close with a quick word about how political realignments portend doom for the left even though the right is really screwing this up. Then we’ll all buy mop handle futures.

Awokening

The Great Awokening of the prior decade was founded in part on the False Cause Fallacy. Our major institutions for the better part of the last ten years were operated by wokerists, who used an Intersectional Matrix of Culturally Encouraged Race and Gender Prejudice to counteract what they viewed as hidden unmeasurable forces such as “systemic racism.” They couldn’t point to the systemic racism, but they knew it must be there because of the imbalance in socioeconomic metrics, and they denied any other possible explanation for the imbalance. Once the False Cause was in place, the devout wokerist was forced to fight the hidden prejudice with overt reverse prejudice, because they couldn’t conceive any other cause.

For example, if black folks have a hard time getting into Harvard or UNC, it must be because society is systemically racist against black people, and no other reason, therefore we should redirect admission slots from Asians who earned them to blacks who didn’t, for race balancing.

Harvard did exactly that, for exactly that reason, and admitted it, and it was sent to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court banned it, and then Harvard kept doing it and is still doing it using different words.

Some of our other institutions are still running this wokery program, although the Trump Administration purged much of it from the halls of federal power this year under their DEI ban, and many other institutions used Trump as cover to independently purge it from theirs. But this same smooth-brained thinking wiggled its way right into Trump’s tariff plan last week, through an equation that looks fancy but is something my middle school son could figure out.

Woke Math

The idea of a “reciprocal tariff” sounds tough, and fair, and based, and go-America-punch-flag-eagle, and in concept could be pretty popular if sold in the proper way to the voting base of the United States. It’s certainly “unfair” when some countries tariff our goods to protect their own industries while we don’t tariff their goods to protect our industries. It certainly seems reasonable to treat other countries in the same way they treat us. But are the value of other countries' goods artificially depressed because their businesses don’t have to pay for health insurance for their workers? Or because their workers ride public transportation and don’t need cars? Or their goods are made by child slaves? Or so forth?

What about the stuff the left has been screaming about for decades? The American Left wants workers to be paid not just a minimum wage, but a living wage which is four times higher than the median international worker’s salary. The American Left wants the Water to be Clean, and the Air to be Clean, and burdens American industry with Acts to that effect and Agencies to enforce them. The American Left wants our Occupations to be Safe and Healthy and made an Administration that burdens our factories with rules which get rulier each day. And for many years the American Left enjoyed support of American Unions whose jobs slowly dwindled to nearly nothing when Nike found out they could make Dirty Water Dirty Air Unsafe Unhealthy Nonliving Wage shoes in Vietnam at a cost of $18 per shoe.

Do we just stand by while we punish ourselves with rules that nobody else has to follow? How much should we tariff Vietnam to punish them for being Dirty Unsafe Unhealthy Poor Communists who took our jobs? We could do some sort of broad analysis that determines how much of an advantage it is to be a dirty communist and assess a tariff commensurate with that advantage, but that might take some thought or effort. Instead Trump just decided to tariff Vietnam, and everyone else, this much:

Let’s walk through this. 𝜏 is the tariff. ε is the price elasticity of import demand, ϕ is the elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, m is imports, and x is exports. If some smooth-brain were to set ε equal to the inverse of ϕ, say for instance at something like 4 and ¼, then those cancel and the tariff is just [trade deficit] divided by [imports]. It has nothing to do with how much they tariff us, and everything to do with how much stuff they ship us and how little we ship them. And this is exactly what Trump did:

The amount they tariff us doesn’t even show up in the equation. There’s nothing “reciprocal” about it, unless you presume that all trade imbalance between two countries must be de facto evidence of systemic unfair trade practices. Critical Trade Theory. Wokery all over again, applied to international trade. There’s no possible reason that Cuba could grow a better banana than East Atlanta, right?

The texture is intriguing. Internally I’m bleeding.

HWFO

The media thinks these woke tariffs are going to bomb the economy back to the stone age, but when I make the abhorrent choice to read the graphs myself it looks more like January 2024. A 20% tariff on Chinese goods is rough. Adding 34% more to it is rougher. But a 54% tariff on Chinese goods is nothing compared to Shenzhen closing its entire manufacturing sector down because they found a germ, and probably not significantly worse than the Fed turning off the free money spigot in 2022.

These tariffs are going to do goofy shit to the economy. I don't like the goofy shit they're likely to do. I think that trade balancing through tariffs is an idea so stupid that only Rust Belt union workers could come up with it, which is why they probably did come up with it, and also probably why Trump won the election by flipping the Rust Belt. (see map below)

Mop Handle Instructions

If you were one of the people who were running around on Facebook in 2020 supporting the Covid lockdowns and Covid bailouts, which precipitated a historically high inflation spike that literally priced an entire generation out of being able to buy a house, and now you're whining about financial instability from tariffs, you can shove an entire mop handle up your rear end until it makes a fluffy tail. And that goes doubly true for any boomers whining about their 401k while they sit on a sub 3% APR 30-year fixed rate loan that is the financial equivalent of a bank paying you to own a house that a millennial will never be able to buy from you. Pull yourself up from your own bootstraps. Get an internship, maybe they’ll pay you after a year. Learn to code.

Woke tariffs are fantastically dumb and nobody should support them, but they’re probably only the second or third dumbest thing we’ve done to our economy this decade so far. And they’re totally intellectually consistent with the pro-labor left, the pro-environment left, the living-wage-left, and the left wing people who screamed for lockdown-test-and-trace during Covid which is not possible without a border wall and an import ban.

The left pundits screaming angrily about tariffs today exemplify their complete shift away from their ideological roots, showing they value their stock portfolios more than their centuries-old domestic labor coalitions. Which in turn shows why they’re very unlikely to get the Rust Belt back any time soon.

Remember this map?

This is the Rust Belt map. These are the people to whom Trump promised 60% tariffs on China. They’re not worried about their stock portfolios because they don’t have any, because they lost their job at the Mop Handle Factory to China, Vietnam, and Canada during the Clinton administration.

Thankfully the mop handle industry never fully dried up here, so all the 3% APR Boomers and Covid Karens who owe me a fluffy tail before they open their mouths again can get their requisite ass penetrating mop handles from Holmes Custom Moulding Ltd. of Ohio USA, available for B2B manufacturing supply of all varieties of custom and specified millwork. Visit their website at https://hcmohio.com/ .