Trump's Tariff Plan is Insane

He’s taxing bananas, breaking trade deals, and chasing a fantasy from the 1800s.

I can’t explain how insane Trump’s tariff policies are. I just can’t. But I’ll try.

He’s slapping tariffs on stuff we literally don’t make—and almost certainly never will.

Take coffee. We don’t grow it here. Aside from a little bit in Hawaii, the U.S. just doesn’t have the climate.

Same with bananas. We import nearly all of them from Latin America.

And it’s not just those two things—we import a whole range of goods that simply aren’t produced here.

So when you slap tariffs on these imports, you’re not protecting American industry—because there’s no American industry to protect. And there won’t be, either, because we lack the climate, natural resources, and cost advantages to ever make it viable.

All you’re doing is making coffee, bananas, and a bunch of other essentials more expensive. It’s just a tax on consumers, plain and simple.

As Joey Politano quipped, Trump basically saw a giant red button labeled “make groceries more expensive” and he slammed it down.

It’s stupid. And he didn’t have to. He could’ve carved out exemptions—coffee, bananas, Chilean sea bass, whatever.

But he didn’t. And no one knows why.

I mean, I have my theory: Trump’s not a detail-oriented guy. He likes the simplicity of one big tariff number for every country.

It might sound good to him, but it’s economically destructive.

And that brings me to the next point:

These tariffs are going to be utterly ineffective at accomplishing whatever Trump wants to accomplish.

They won’t achieve anything beyond creating chaos and uncertainty.

And a big reason for that is... you can’t trust Trump.

No Strategy, Just Vibes

This is the same guy who negotiated the USMCA—the new version of NAFTA—during his first term, and now he’s like, “Who’s the idiot who made that deal?”

Uh… you did, man.

Then he slaps tariffs on Canada and Mexico—our closest trading partners—in violation of his own agreement.

He says these new tariffs are to “retaliate” against unfair trade.

But the truth is, the Trump tariffs aren’t based on trade barriers.

They’re based on whatever Trump’s feeling that day, which in turn is loosely based on trade deficits—which, for some reason, Trump seems to hate.

So now Brazil, known for high tariffs on U.S. goods, gets hit with lower Trump tariffs than Switzerland, which barely has any trade barriers at all.

It makes no sense.

And you’ve got Australia and the U.K.—countries with which we run trade surpluses—getting hit with tariffs too, for basically no reason.

Again, completely nonsensical.

A Fantasy of 1800s America

What I’ve noticed is that Trump seems obsessed with this fantasy version of America from the 1800s. Yes, the 1800s.

He’s praised William McKinley—president from 1897 to 1901—who was all about tariffs.

But seriously… does anyone actually want to go back to that world?

Low wages. Far less global trade. And good luck finding an avocado.

Earlier this week, Trump announced 46% tariffs on Vietnam and 37% on Bangladesh.

Never mind that those numbers are based on a completely asinine formula. What exactly does Trump want?

Does he want Nike factories in Ohio?

Does he want to bring back clothing assembly lines to Alabama?

There was a tweet that really captured the absurdity of this whole thing from Balaji Srinivasan:

“Vietnamese women grind in factories to produce Nikes, while Uncle Sam sends them printed money in return. Who is ripping off whom?”

We’re Not Bringing Back Toaster Factories

I mean seriously—there is no way in hell we’re going to start manufacturing toasters and T-shirts and phone chargers at scale in the U.S.

It’s just not going to happen.

So if these tariffs stick, what’s going to happen is simple: prices will go up. We’ll pay more for everything, and it’ll be a direct hit to our purchasing power.

The U.S. economy could even fall into a recession.

And for what?

To bring back some fantasy version of American manufacturing?

To make everything at home and cut ourselves off from the rest of the world?

It’s backward, mercantilist thinking—the kind of stuff people believed in over a century ago.

This Isn’t Targeted; It’s Reckless

Now, I’m not completely anti-tariffs.

If you’re using targeted tariffs to protect and encourage the growth of critical industries—like advanced technologies and medicines—there’s at least a case to be made.

But this? This isn’t that. Not even close.

To make matters worse, no one even knows what Trump is actually trying to do.

I’ve speculated in this piece about some of his motivations.

But within his own circle, you’ve got people on one side saying the tariffs are a negotiating tactic to bring down trade barriers around the world, and people on the other side saying they’re permanent and meant to bring back American manufacturing.

Trump himself has said both of those things—plus something about fentanyl, and even replacing income taxes with tariffs.

So yeah… there’s no clear goal here. Just absolute chaos.

And all while this confusion is going on, these tariffs will hurt the American economy—which, by the way, has been dominant for decades thanks in large part to open markets and predictable policies.

That’s now being undermined by the president of the United States himself.

And the irony is that even U.S. manufacturers—the ones these tariffs are supposedly helping—are going to get hurt too, because they rely on imported parts, materials, and international supply chains.

You can’t just remake a global production system overnight.

You can’t force every part of this system to come back to the U.S. through tariff policy that is changing every day—nor would you want to.

It would make the country poorer overall.

One Last Hope

I’m not completely out of hope.

Maybe Trump quietly walks some of this back after declaring a fake victory.

Or maybe, just maybe, some members of his party step up before the real damage is done.