You can tax a man, you can rob him blind, you can spit in his face and tell him it’s rain, but don’t fucking tell him you’re saving him while you do it. That’s what a tariff is. A tax with a flag on it. A shakedown in the name of patriotism. The government kicks you in the balls and calls it protecting American jobs.
Trump stood there, chest puffed out like a cheap parade balloon, shouting about winning. America First. Strength. Fair trade. Like a used car salesman trying to convince you that the rust on the hood is a feature, not a problem. So he slapped tariffs on steel, on aluminum, on goddamn everything. Said it would bring back jobs. Said it would punish China. Said it would make America strong again.
What it actually did was make America expensive.
Prices crept up like a bad hangover. First, it was the big things—cars, appliances, heavy machinery. Then it was the groceries. The milk. The bread. The eggs. The things that never had anything to do with steel or aluminum but sure as hell had to do with a supply chain that just got a government-issued baseball bat to the knees.
The factories didn’t come back. They never do. You can’t force companies to set up shop in a country where it costs more to do business just because you feel sentimental about the Rust Belt. You can’t tax foreign imports into oblivion and expect your own economy to magically fill the gap. All you do is pass the bill down to the guy stocking shelves at Walmart, the waitress scraping tips together, the single mother staring at a receipt wondering why her paycheck shrinks while everything else grows.
And China? They loved it.
They didn’t have to do a damn thing but wait. While America jacked up its own prices, China kept making deals. They found new buyers. New trade partners. New ways to move goods. And when American farmers suddenly found out that their biggest customers—China—weren’t buying their crops anymore, who do you think stepped in? Other countries. Other suppliers. The market moved on. But America? America stood there, tariffs in hand, looking like a drunk who just bet the rent money on a bad hand and lost.
And what did the government do? It did what it always does—it bailed out the industries it had just gutted. They handed out subsidies like a priest handing out cheap salvation, telling farmers, “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.” But where did that money come from? From the same people who just got screwed by the tariffs. The taxpayers. The ones who already paid more at the grocery store, more at the gas pump, more for everything. It was the perfect scam—create a problem, then tax people to fix the problem you created. And the suckers kept falling for it.
Meanwhile, China kept building, kept trading, kept playing the long game. They didn’t need to win a trade war—they just needed to wait for America to lose it on its own. And lose it did.
Tariffs are a racket. A con. A way for men who never worked an honest job in their lives to pretend they’re fighting for the working class while they pick its pockets. The real way to fix trade? Compete. Build better. Innovate. Make something so damn good that people want to buy it. But that takes work, and work is something Washington doesn’t believe in.
So instead, they went with the easy fix. They taxed their own people, pissed off the rest of the world, and stood there wondering why nothing got better.
And when it all came crashing down?
They blamed China.
1/2
S. Tominaga AKA CSW
Mar 20, 2025
https://x.com/CsTominaga/status/1902637873339494631?t=yl5NuJqaR_d4c9g77Lgs1Q&s=19
https://t.me/S_Tominaga/2702
Trump stood there, chest puffed out like a cheap parade balloon, shouting about winning. America First. Strength. Fair trade. Like a used car salesman trying to convince you that the rust on the hood is a feature, not a problem. So he slapped tariffs on steel, on aluminum, on goddamn everything. Said it would bring back jobs. Said it would punish China. Said it would make America strong again.
What it actually did was make America expensive.
Prices crept up like a bad hangover. First, it was the big things—cars, appliances, heavy machinery. Then it was the groceries. The milk. The bread. The eggs. The things that never had anything to do with steel or aluminum but sure as hell had to do with a supply chain that just got a government-issued baseball bat to the knees.
The factories didn’t come back. They never do. You can’t force companies to set up shop in a country where it costs more to do business just because you feel sentimental about the Rust Belt. You can’t tax foreign imports into oblivion and expect your own economy to magically fill the gap. All you do is pass the bill down to the guy stocking shelves at Walmart, the waitress scraping tips together, the single mother staring at a receipt wondering why her paycheck shrinks while everything else grows.
And China? They loved it.
They didn’t have to do a damn thing but wait. While America jacked up its own prices, China kept making deals. They found new buyers. New trade partners. New ways to move goods. And when American farmers suddenly found out that their biggest customers—China—weren’t buying their crops anymore, who do you think stepped in? Other countries. Other suppliers. The market moved on. But America? America stood there, tariffs in hand, looking like a drunk who just bet the rent money on a bad hand and lost.
And what did the government do? It did what it always does—it bailed out the industries it had just gutted. They handed out subsidies like a priest handing out cheap salvation, telling farmers, “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.” But where did that money come from? From the same people who just got screwed by the tariffs. The taxpayers. The ones who already paid more at the grocery store, more at the gas pump, more for everything. It was the perfect scam—create a problem, then tax people to fix the problem you created. And the suckers kept falling for it.
Meanwhile, China kept building, kept trading, kept playing the long game. They didn’t need to win a trade war—they just needed to wait for America to lose it on its own. And lose it did.
Tariffs are a racket. A con. A way for men who never worked an honest job in their lives to pretend they’re fighting for the working class while they pick its pockets. The real way to fix trade? Compete. Build better. Innovate. Make something so damn good that people want to buy it. But that takes work, and work is something Washington doesn’t believe in.
So instead, they went with the easy fix. They taxed their own people, pissed off the rest of the world, and stood there wondering why nothing got better.
And when it all came crashing down?
They blamed China.
1/2
S. Tominaga AKA CSW
Mar 20, 2025
https://x.com/CsTominaga/status/1902637873339494631?t=yl5NuJqaR_d4c9g77Lgs1Q&s=19
https://t.me/S_Tominaga/2702
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