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Morons And Tariffs
Why the two things should never be permitted to meet
This article will take a quick look at why the moron Trump’s obsession with tariffs will not only trigger a global Second Great Depression but will also crush everyone who voted for him aside from his coterie of slithering self-serving billionaires.
Trump, being a moron, doesn’t understand trade. For him, everything is a zero-sum game: one person’s gain must be another person’s loss. In reality (a place Trump is intellectually barred from ever perceiving) that’s not how trade works. In fact, trade is a fundamental element of all human society and the earliest written records we have, dating back nearly 4,000 years, all involve trade. Trade is what sets us apart from the other apes. It’s why we live in huge cities while our primate cousins are still on the savannah and in the trees.
So why is trade so central to human affairs?
Let’s begin with the concept of specialization.
Even in small tribal groups, some individuals will be more gifted at certain tasks than others. Perhaps Urgh is great at flint-knapping but not so hot at basket weaving, while Jeergah is a fabulous basket-weaver but can’t knap a flint to save her life. It makes sense, therefore, for Urgh to churn out as many well-knapped flints as possible and trade a few for some of Jeergah’s baskets. Both sides benefit by getting higher-quality products than they could make for themselves.
As David Ricardo showed, when it comes to nations trade not merely enables higher-quality outputs but also enriches all participants. This is because specializing in areas of comparative advantage increases total value created. To understand how, let’s consider why nations export and import things.
Today, we see some countries exporting raw materials to nations that don’t have much in the way of their own, while they import things that other nations make more cheaply due to economies of scale. For example, Pongoland has a population of only two million people but it has loads of ore containing valuable platinum. Even in a best-case scenario, cars made in Pongoland would be far more expensive than cars made in Blingland, whose population of ninety million encourages mass production due to a large indigenous market…
