Tariffs Are Great! (MAGA’s Inability to See Outside of Their Box)

By Christopher Moore

Today — yes, TODAY, August 7, 2025 — we wake up to the grand economic “masterstroke” of full tariffs hitting imports from nearly 70 countries. A symphony of chest-thumping, flag-waving We-only-make-it-here bravado. Because apparently the best way to solve a complex global trade web is to pretend the planet’s resources come stamped with an American flag, and that the more complicated the problem, the bigger the sledgehammer you should swing.

Yeah. Because nothing screams “smart, forward-thinking economic strategy” like pretending global supply chains don’t exist, every raw material you could ever need is buried in your backyard, and the world is still in black-and-white. It’s the economic equivalent of trying to stream Netflix through a rotary phone.

1. Precious Metals Don’t Grow on Trees (Or in Factories)

Precious Minerals — they don’t sprout from your lawn like dandelions or appear next to the grill when you’re flipping burgers. The U.S. doesn’t hold a monopoly on the stuff; it comes from places like South Africa, China, and Russia. They’ve got the mines, the reserves, and those are the countries holding the geological lottery tickets. If you want electronics, EV batteries, catalytic converters, or even basic medical equipment, you’re going to import these metals or pay triple for the scraps we’ve got here. And when your supply chain is hostage to where Mother Nature put the good stuff, your “we’ll make it all here” fantasy dies faster than a cordless drill with a knockoff battery.

Gold, silver, platinum — you don’t make them in a lab, you dig them up where they exist. Spoiler: that’s not always in the U.S.

Unless you’ve got a secret cobalt vein under your tool shed — and the millions to dig it up without triggering an EPA hazmat nightmare — your “make it all here” fantasy is about as realistic as trying to stream Netflix on a rotary phone.

2. A Lot of What We Import Would Poison Our Backyard

Do you really want to fire up a chlorine-belching plastics plant down the road from your kid’s school just so you can stamp “Made in America” on some cheap junk you’ll throw away in six months?

Want your kid’s school to sit next to a plant pumping out chlorine fumes like it’s auditioning for a dystopian movie? No? Then maybe it’s smarter to let countries without strict clean air or water laws handle the nastiest manufacturing. It’s not liberalism — it’s self-preservation. Some things are imported because making them here would turn our neighborhoods into environmental crime scenes. The “I want it all made here” crowd ignores that reality like it’s fine print they don’t feel like reading.

We import certain goods because making them here would mean trashing our air, water, and soil — and paying through the nose to clean it up after. Other countries? They don’t have the same rules, so they crank out the goods while eating the environmental cost. We benefit from the product without having to add “cancer clusters” to our list of economic achievements.

3. The Fantasy of “We Can Make It All Here”

Even if we could mine every metal, grow every crop, and spin up every factory at once, we’d still be better off trading. That’s not weakness — it’s called comparative advantage, and it’s why every major economy in the world does it.

We make what we’re best at (jets, advanced machinery, software, biotech) and we trade for what others do better (wine, tropical fruit, specialized electronics). It’s like saying you’ll rebuild your own transmission instead of taking it to a mechanic — you could try, but the results will probably be ugly and expensive.

4. Imports: The Unsung Hero of Innovation and Affordable Stuff

If we only bought American-made everything, we’d have fewer choices, worse products, and higher prices than a Manhattan apartment. Competition from imports forces U.S. companies to innovate, streamline, and not get complacent.

That’s why your phone has a camera that doesn’t look like it was made in 1998. It’s why your car has safety features your grandpa couldn’t dream of. Without that competition, you’d still be staring at a brick-shaped cell phone with an antenna you had to pull out, and Ford would still be cranking out sedans with zero airbags and radios stuck on AM.

Kill import competition and watch American companies get lazy fast. Without it, you’d be buying overpriced gadgets with 1998 tech and cars with “safety features” that amount to crossed fingers. Imports keep our companies on their toes, force innovation, and stop price-gouging.

5. Scarcity Is Geography, Not a Conspiracy

Singapore imports 90% of its food because they’re a skyscraper jungle, not a cornfield. Water-scarce nations import grain instead of sucking their rivers dry. Even the U.S. imports certain crops from water-rich regions to save resources at home.

Geography isn’t a shadowy globalist plot — it’s reality. Tariffs can’t change rainfall patterns or create farmland where there’s desert. They just make everything harder to get and more expensive to buy.

If producing something at home drains your resources faster than you can replace them, importing it keeps you alive and your land usable. That’s called not being stupid with what you have — something we used to value before politics turned common sense into a partisan issue.

6. Carbon & Regulation — The Cost of Breathing Clean Air

Making more stuff domestically means playing by the rules that keep our air breathable and our water drinkable. That’s carbon taxes, clean air standards, and waste disposal laws — all of which cost money. Producing certain goods here means higher costs thanks to environmental regulations.

Carbon pricing, clean air rules, waste disposal requirements — these aren’t “liberal overreach,” they’re why we don’t have rivers that catch fire anymore.
Ditch those, and welcome back air that feels like breathing through an ashtray. We don’t have those disasters anymore because we learned the hard way. Want to roll it all back for cheaper goods? Congratulations, you’ve reinvented the 1970s smog cloud.

And before you start ranting about “just get rid of the regulations,” remember you like breathing without tasting smog.

Making certain products here would be so expensive under those rules that you’d either triple the sticker price or move production to the moon.

7. Sorry, But the 1950s Ain’t Coming Back

The postwar manufacturing boom isn’t coming back. That world ran on different technology, different trade systems, and different social rules — some of which we’ve spent decades fixing. Tariffs won’t rewind the clock; they’ll just break the player. If you think we can live in a modern economy with 1950s trade policy, you’re in for a rude awakening — and possibly ration stamps.

The world is digital, trade is instant, and supply chains are global. Tariffs alone won’t bring back your grandpa’s factory job — unless your grandpa’s factory made nostalgia itself.

And let’s be honest: the 1950s economy also came with the 1950s social structure. You want to roll back prices, technology, and trade? Get ready to roll back everything else that came with that era too. This fantasy isn’t just unrealistic — it’s selective memory dressed up as patriotism.

Tariff Myths That Need to Die

Myth #1: “Tariffs Make Us Self-Sufficient.”
Nope. They just make foreign goods more expensive — they don’t magically make them appear in American factories. If we don’t already make it here, you’re just paying more for the same product.

Reality: They make imports pricier, not magically made in America.

Myth #2: “Tariffs Bring Back Jobs.”
Maybe for a hot minute… until companies relocate to avoid them. Then you’re back where you started, but now you can’t afford a dishwasher.

Reality: They might for a few months — until companies bail overseas.

Myth #3: “Tariffs Punish China, Not Us.”
Wrong. Importers pay them and pass the bill to you. It’s basically a self-imposed tax disguised as “tough on China” chest-thumping.

Reality: Importers just hand you the bill.

Myth #4: “We Can Make Everything Here.”
Unless you’ve got a cobalt mine hidden under your lawn, no. And even then, good luck refining it without breaking a dozen EPA laws.

Reality: Unless you’ve discovered a hidden metals volcano, no.

Myth #5: “Tariffs Protect National Security.”
When used surgically. When used as a flex they just start trade wars and make allies into enemies overnight. Trade wars only hurt civilians.

Reality: Sometimes, but blanket tariffs start trade wars faster than they save industries.

Myth #6: “Tariffs Don’t Affect Me.”
Tell that to anyone who’s bought an appliance, car, or tool since the last tariff hike. Your wallet knows the truth.

Reality: Check your last receipt.

Myth #7: “They Worked Before, So They’ll Work Now.”
The 1920s economy wasn’t running on a global semiconductor supply chain. This ain’t the same game, and pretending it is just makes you look like you failed economics twice.

Reality: The global economy isn’t the 1920s.

Bottom Line

Today’s tariffs are a big, loud, expensive mess. They cut GDP growth by half a point, kill nearly half a million jobs, and raise prices across the board. It’s not a strategy — it’s political theater. Imports aren’t the enemy.

Imports aren’t a weakness — they’re smart economics when done right. Dumb, blanket tariffs are the punchline to an economic joke that already bombed decades ago.

If your whole trade policy fits on a red hat, it’s not a strategy — it’s marketing.

President Con Man sold you something. Now we’re all stuck paying for it.

-The Gun Loving Hippie Dad … Who Fixes Stuff

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