CSotD: How Others See It
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Dave Brown offers the most generous take on Dear Leader’s tariff tantrum, in which he takes aim at the big bad world out there in his most America First way, but does more damage to Uncle Sam and his American constituents.
It’s unintentional, but there it is: However random and nonsensical the tariffs placed on each country, they’re paid by Americans. Worse, the burden is falling more heavily on the less wealthy, because they tend to spend more of their limited income to get by, rather than investing or saving it.
That is, we may all purchase the same number of avocados in a year, but a billionaire doesn’t mark the price or the cost, because it’s such a tiny portion of his overall income.
By contrast, income tax is a percentage of income rather than a flat amount: If everyone had to pay $6,000 a year in taxes, the person who makes $500,000 annually would feel it less than the one who makes $34,000 a year.
One estimate is that American families will each pay about $2,400 in tariffs this year. Obviously, that hits poorer families harder than rich ones. You don’t have to go to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania to understand this, but apparently you can go there, get a degree and still not understand it.
Which is roughly like graduating from law school and thinking that a tort is some kind of little fruit pie.
I said to Emmerson that the headline in Patel’s hands should have read “Trump hits NZ exports …” rather than “exporters,” since it’s the American importers who will have to pay the price. He responded, however, that the exporters are also being hit because it’s likely they’ll sell less and earn less because of the tariffs, and so, from a Kiwi point of view, the exporters are being hit.
It’s a good point, and a reminder that our bizarre foreign trade practices are hurting companies and workers around the world, which isn’t improving our image abroad.
He also pointed out that Patel made the trip to New Zealand for the opening of an FBI office there, which he thought was silly. I agree, but in this case the cost is entirely ours to bear.
Anyway, since it’s not clear Patel understands how to do his actual job, we might as well hand him a pair of scissors and put him on an airplane to go cut a ribbon.
And count yourselves lucky, New Zealand.
Argentina got Kristi Kosplay, who dressed up like a for-real gaucho (gaucha?) for her trip down there to do whatever it is she does on behalf of her country, aside from staging fancy-dress photo ops.
Corey Lewandowski has no official job at Homeland Security, but apparently came along because they’re married. Though not to each other.
I haven’t seen how she vouchered the trip, but I have a sneaking suspicion we just paid for a tryst.
“(N)o hour of life is wasted that is spent in the saddle!” – Kristi Noem
Meanwhile, Dear Leader was, as Zapiro saw it, handing out spankings to the nations of the world in the form of tariffs that, as Emmerson noted, are paid by Americans but damage the foreign trade of other nations.
Zapiro shows Cyril Ramaphosa waiting his turn in the principal’s office. He already got a public spanking back in May, when he was confronted with fake evidence of a systematic oppression of white farmers in South Africa, though, in all fairness, the White House was forced to forge evidence because there is no systematic oppression of white farmers in South Africa.
Anyway, the real joke in Zapiro’s cartoon is that Ramaphosa is holding his “Tariff homework,” when there is no way to study for the tariffs because they are random. It’s like studying before you spin that big wheel on The Price is Right.
The other joke is that Ramaphosa didn’t have to show up in person to get the bad news about tariffs, but, then again, he couldn’t send his trade representative because Mcebisi Jonas had his visa refused and was unable to enter the country.
This appears to have been caused by a mutual stand-off, with some people in South Africa outraged that the US would refuse to allow a diplomat into the country and others outraged that SA would send someone they already knew was on the outs with the Trump government.
Meanwhile, Rico suggests, the country would just like to find out what their tariff is going to be, but finds itself so low on the American scale of values that they’re just going to have to wait.
The results came in after Rico’s cartoon ran, and the answer is a whopping 30%, though it should be noted that it could change again, because Dear Leader sometimes does that, and also because the US courts might uphold the law that says Trump doesn’t have the authority to set tariffs except in a national emergency.
They could rule that having him in the White House isn’t that kind of national emergency.
Ah well, never mind. He’s quite popular in Scotland. (Language warning)
And Now For Something Completely Different
If you are a political cartoonist featured at Arcamax, you may want to check with whoever submits your material there and make sure they are sending it as GIFs and not PNGs.
For the past several weeks some political cartoons at Arcamax have been nice and crisp while other have been fuzzy and unpleasant to look at.
Apparently, the PNG cartoons are 250 pixels wide.
But they’re displayed at 600 pixels wide, which obviously stretches things well beyond anybody’s idea of appropriate focus.
Meanwhile, cartoons placed up there at 600 pixels wide in GIF format are displayed at 600 pixels wide, so they come out crisp and sharp.
Everything here was converted to WEBP because that’s how we keep our ever-growing collection of files reasonable, but scroll through Arcamax for yourself.
Cartoonists need to monitor their own work; The days when you could leave it up to others are gone and your career is at stake.
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