Episode 19: Blowing Up the Economy: Trump’s Tariff Gamble

Episode Summary:
In Episode 19 of Surviving Trump, host Bella Goode unpacks Donald Trump’s massive April 2025 tariff announcement—the largest unilateral economic move in modern U.S. history. This episode breaks down what tariffs actually are, how Trump’s new policy distorts their use, and why this isn’t just about trade — it’s about power. From market collapses and economic misinformation to ideological fantasy and authoritarian leverage, we explore how Trump is using tariffs as a political weapon—and how you’re already paying the price.

In This Episode:

• What tariffs are and how they work in plain language
• Trump’s sweeping April 2 announcement and the bizarre math behind his new tariff plan
• Why the tariffs were timed for now — and how they serve Trump’s political agenda
• How Trump sees tariffs as tools of dominance, not policy
• The administration’s surreal spin on the resulting market crash

Next Episode:

Episode 20: “The Fallout”
We turn the lens to economists, workers, and everyday Americans to assess the damage. You’ll hear why some are calling Trump’s tariffs “economic malpractice.” How are farmers, families, and industries reacting? What’s Congress doing—or not doing? And what will MAGA voters tolerate as the pain spreads?

Transcript

 00:04

Hey everyone. It's Bella Goode here and welcome back to Surviving Trump. This is episode 19, Blowing Up The Economy: Trump's Tariff Gamble. You know, I hate tariffs. I hate them because it's some economic term that I should know more about. I think I'd rather have a root canal than read a book about tariffs. Now, having said this, I also realized how timely and how important this topic is right now, so I did the research, and I found enough material to fill three episodes, and I learned a ton. It wasn't nearly as dry and complicated as I thought it would be. So you out there, take that pillowcase off your head and give a listen. You won't regret it, because what Trump just did with his April tariffs, it affects you and it affects me it affects all of us. 

Right now, every time we buy groceries, every time we fill up our gas tank or pay our mortgages, we may feel the effects. This isn't just another trade policy. This is the largest instant, unilateral economic move in modern US history, done by choice, not necessity. And Trump's betting it will work, that it will bring back jobs, punish America's rivals, and make him look like an economic genius heading into the election. And Trump is betting that it will work, that it will bring jobs back, it will punish America's rivals, and it will make him look like an economic genius capping off his second term. But what if he's wrong? In this episode, we're going to break it all down in plain language, how tariffs actually work, and what they're supposed to do, what Trump's new tariff plan looks like, and how it was rolled out with distortion, misinformation and zero precedence. 

So why did he do it now, and how his administration sees tariffs not just as economic tools but as political weapons? How Trump believes tarrifs will remake the economy, and why that vision is rooted in historical nostalgia, economic nationalism and personal grievance. And how the markets have responded with a terrifying plunge and rising fears of a recession as Trump and his inner circle try to rationalize the fallout. Meanwhile, Trump is playing golf. That's all being covered in this episode. 

The rest, including what leading economists are saying and the real world impact on families, consumers and industry continues next time in Episode 20. I've tried to bring this conversation down to a level that's easier to grasp with real examples, farmers, small business owners, car dealerships, electronic stores, all caught in the crossfire of a trade war that didn't have to happen. So if you've ever tuned out when someone mentions the CPI or the Dow or the consumer price sensitivity index. Stay with me. This episode will give you what you need to understand what's really happening and why it matters, not just for Wall Street, but for your wallet. So let's dive in. So first, what exactly are tariffs? Tariffs are at their core taxes, but unlike income or sales taxes, tariffs are imposed specifically on goods that cross borders, they're levied on imports. 

When a product enters the United States from another country, a tariff adds an extra charge at the border. That fee is paid by the importing company. The importing company, the company that owns the product, not the exporting country. And in most cases, the cost is quietly passed along to consumers through higher prices. For example, if a US business imports $100 product and there's a 25% tariff, it owes the government an additional $25 that's $125 cost that gets baked into the retail price. Typically, in other words, tariffs are not paid by foreign governments, despite what some politicians claim, the burden falls on American companies and ultimately American families. This fundamental misunderstanding is at the heart of Trump's 2025 trade push. 

His rhetoric frames tariffs as punishments on cheating countries or tools to bring back jobs. But economists broadly agree that tariffs are regressive taxes. They disrupt global supply chains, they raise costs for US manufacturers, and hit working and middle class consumers the hardest. As Paul Krugman recently noted, "tariffs aren't a weapon against China, they're attacks on Americans." You know, I just mentioned regressive taxes. This means lower income individuals pay a larger percentage of their income compared to higher income earners, and they create a disproportionate burden on those with less income as the tax takes a more significant share of their financial resources. So there's a couple of reasons, typical reasons why governments impose tariffs. They do it to protect domestic industries. 

Tariffs can raise the price of foreign goods, giving local producers a competitive edge, but this protection often creates inefficiency and just asks for retaliation. In 2025 countries like China, Canada and Mexico have already announced counter tariffs targeting American goods like beef, whiskey and farm exports. There's another reason why governments use tariffs to generate revenue. Tariffs do generate income for the US Treasury. Trump claims they could replace income taxes altogether, but the math gets an F minus. The US imports about 3 trillion in goods annually and raises a similar amount from income taxes. To fully replace that revenue, we'd need 100% tariffs on everything, which would be a catastrophic move, even Trump's current plan is expected to raise only about 120 billion per year, a fraction of what would be needed to offset his proposed tax cuts. And another reason why governments use tariffs, they're used for trade leverage. 

Tariffs can sometimes be used to force negotiations, but when applied indiscriminately, as Trump is doing, they tend to isolate the US, provoke retaliation and destabilize global markets in 2025 Trump isn't just using tariffs as a policy tool. He's turning them into a political spectacle. He announced blanket tariffs on more than 180 countries, introduced bizarre reciprocal formulas that no Economist has ever seen before, and promised America's economic revival through what amounts to a sweeping tax hike on imported goods. What we are witnessing isn't just a tax tariff policy. It's a test of economic reality versus ideological fantasy. And history offers a clear warning. 

In 1930 it's called the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, it raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods in an effort to protect American farmers and manufacturers during the early days of the Great Depression. But instead of helping, it triggered a global trade war. It led to retaliatory tariffs from other countries, and it deepened the Great Depression. It's one of the worst economic collapses in history marked by soaring unemployment, widespread poverty and deflation, economists have long cited the Smoot-Hawley act as a cautionary tale about the dangers of protectionism gone too far. Trump, very interestingly, often romanticizes the pre 1913 era as a model of American strength. 

But what he ignores is that tariffs were the government's only major revenue source back then, because there were no income taxes, they weren't legal, yet they weren't legal until the end of 1913 with the 16th Amendment enforcement was simple back in 1913. Customs officers taxed goods at ports, and the government was a fraction of its current size, no social security, no Medicare, no Pentagon budget. In that world, tariffs worked because the government was small. In today's economy, they can't carry the same weight, and trying to make them will lead to chaos. Modern tariffs don't operate in isolation. When the US imposes tariffs, other nations respond. US manufacturers see higher import costs. Retail Prices start to climb. Markets react, and everyday people pay more often without realizing that their grocery bill or appliance cost is being driven by geopolitical shenanigans. In short, tariffs are a blunt economic instrument with far reaching consequences. They may offer symbolic wins or short term protection, but they rarely deliver real prosperity. 

Under Trump they're being deployed as an opening move in a broader economic conflict, one that risks weakening America's global standing while increasing the burden on the very people he claims to defend. With that as background, let's talk about what happened on April 2, 2025. Trump announced a sweeping set of new tariffs that dramatically escalated his administration's trade agenda. Standing outside the White House in a rather fake theatrical setting, Trump declared the launch of a universal baseline tariff of 10% on all imports entering the United States effective April 5. On top of that, he introduced a new formula for so called reciprocal tariffs, which would apply steeper duties to imports from countries with large trade surpluses relative to the US. These additional tariffs scheduled to take effect on April 9 are targeted at around 60 countries and include some of us largest trading partners. 

For example, the new rate on Chinese imports will jump to 54% Vietnamese goods will jump to 46% and Taiwanese imports to 32% Trump also announced a 25% tariff on all imported cars, with further duties expected on pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and other key sectors. Trump justified these tariffs by framing them as a national emergency response, claiming that they were necessary to rebuild American industry combat trade imbalances and fund sweeping tax cuts. However, the roll out was immediately followed by financial market turmoil. The Dow Jones dropped 1600 points on Thursday following the announcement. Then on Friday, it fell another 2200 points, the Standard and Poor 500 and the NASDAQ also saw their steepest two day losses since the early COVID crash. Economists, investors and business leaders are now openly warning of a potential global recession. 

What drew special scrutiny was the method used to calculate the reciprocal tariffs. According to the White House's own documents, the new rates weren't based on existing foreign tariffs, but on a formula involving trade surpluses and export volumes, a calculation that nobody in the professional trade community had ever seen before. The Office of the US Trade Representative confirmed that the administration did not use actual tariff data to determine these rates. CNBC Steve Liesman remarked that nobody has ever used this formula, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers likened it to comparing creation to biology, a political belief system masquerading as economics Midas Touch, which is a media channel, posted a meme style breakdown mocking Trump's tariff math; "if it sounds tough, double it if it hurts blue states, triple it if it crashes the market, blame Biden." In the end, there was no formula. 

The tariffs were dictated by Trump, with numbers like 60% chosen for shock value, political signaling and personal preference not derived from trade models or economic logic. Trump's speech also included a barrage of falsehoods and distortions that drew immediate fact checks. He claimed that the European Union imposes tariffs as high as 39% on US exports, when in reality, the EU's average tariff on American goods is under 3% he insisted that the United States subsidizes Canada by $200 billion a year, a claim based on a gross exaggeration of the trade balance between the two nations. He repeated his assertion that the US collected hundreds of billions of dollars from China during his first term, implying that China paid the tariffs directly, even though the tariffs are paid by us importers and passed along to American consumers. 

He also made historically inaccurate claims about previous trade policies. He said no tariffs existed on Chinese goods before his first term, which is bullshit. And suggested that the Great Depression was caused by a lack of tariffs, when in fact, the opposite is true. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 which we talked about earlier, which raised import duties, is widely blamed for the worsening the global economic crisis. Trump praised the US economy prior to 1913 as the strongest in history, ignoring both the limited industrial base of that era and the massive economic growth that occurred during the 20th century. He falsely declared that inflation under President Biden was the highest in US history. It's not with much higher peaks during the 1970s and said Biden had the lowest approval ratings of any president, which is also inaccurate. He accused Democrats of plotting to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid claims described by analysts as baseless and inflammatory. 

What alarmed economists even more than the substance of the plan was the underlying motive, as David Dayton of The American Prospect wrote, "Trump's use of tariffs now resembles a protection racket. Foreign governments and businesses are being told to cut special deals or face ruinous costs." Eric Trump reinforced this message, saying countries that move fast to negotiate will win, while those who hesitate will lose. The strategy was confirmed again when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, said on CNBC, "the President has always understood tariffs as leverage. You get what you negotiate, not what you deserve. If companies want relief, they know where to go." And that's the central shift. This isn't trade policy anymore, it's economic coercion. 

Trump is using the size of the US market not to negotiate better agreements, but to demand loyalty. The international response was swift and harsh. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney called it the end of the global economic system anchored on US leadership. Europeans described it as pure extortion, and China responded with new tariffs on U.S. beef, wheat and microchips. Brazil, India and South Korea are considering a block wide response. What we saw on April 2 wasn't just a tariff announcement, it was the opening shot in a global trade war made worse by the fact that it wasn't designed to serve a national strategy. It was designed to serve Donald Trump. So why this sudden move to impose massive tariffs on nearly every country in the world? Trump framed it as a response to a national economic emergency, claiming that America's wealth was being drained by foreign cheaters and global elites. He stood outside the White House on April the second and called it Liberation Day, saying that American industry was finally being freed from decades of exploitation. 

Quite frankly, I call it Obliteration day, but there's more going on beneath the surface, and it's it's worth a mention publicly. Trump justified the tariffs by pointing to trade deficits. He said the US is being taken advantage of by countries like China, Germany and Mexico, who export far more to the US than they import. He argues that reciprocal tariffs are a way to make things fair if a country has $100 billion trade surplus with the US, they should pay a penalty until that imbalance is corrected. But this logic has been widely, widely dismissed by economists as incoherent. Trade imbalances aren't necessarily signs of cheating, they're often reflections of economic scale, demand and specialization, the reciprocal tariff formula used by Trump's team, that is, if there was a formula, it doesn't align with actual foreign tariff policies. 

In fact, it seems to have been made up out of thin air, possibly with the help of maybe AI tools that prioritize political messaging over sound economics. CNBC analysts were stunned. Larry Summers, who I mentioned earlier, the former Treasury Secretary, said that it had the intellectual rigor of an astrologist with a calculator. Trump's team, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, defended the formula as a way to get tough and used the full weight of the US market. Lutnick even said, "this isn't about fairness, it's about power." And that points to the deeper motive. These tariffs aren't about just fixing trade policy. They're about asserting dominance. Trump and his advisors see tariffs as a form of leverage, a financial weapon that can be used to punish rivals, reward allies and centralize control over the US economy. This isn't new. 

During his first term, Trump floated using tariffs to strong arm Mexico into immigration enforcement. Now in 2025 that idea has evolved into a doctrine. If you want access to the US market, you deal with Trump. If you want relief from tariffs, you make a deal, not with Congress, not with a regulatory agency, but directly with him. This opens the door to corruption, favoritism and backroom deals on a global scale. Think of it as transactional authoritarianism. The price of economic survival is loyalty. The rhetoric is also deeply nationalistic. Trump speaks of economic independence as if it was the only path to American greatness. He said repeatedly that. Foreign goods made the US vulnerable. That reliance on Chinese Semi- conductors, Canadian aluminum or German auto parts is a threat to national security, and by taxing those goods, he claims he is making America stronger, more self reliant and more free. 

But there's another reason Trump chose this moment. He's not campaigning anymore. He's governing, and he's looking for a defining issue that asserts dominance, cuts through the chaos and reaffirms his claim to singular authority. And tariffs do exactly that. They're bold, they're disruptive, they're headline grabbing, and they allow Trump to say, only I can fix it. This isn't about economic policy. It's about power. They let him attack enemies abroad and critics at home. They let him bypass Congress reward local donors and punish dissenters in the business community. They create economic pain that he can use as both a threat and a promise. Support me, and I'll make the pain go away. And that's what tariffs do for him. Retailers are raising prices, manufacturers are panicking. Economists are forecasting lower GDP, that is gross domestic product, the total value of all goods and services a country produces and forecasting higher inflation and even the return of stagflation, which is a toxic mix of slow economic growth and high inflation happening at the same time, which makes recovery incredibly difficult. 

Some experts are even warning of a possible recession, a significant decline in economic activity that lasts more than a few months, often marked by falling incomes, rising unemployment and reduced consumer spending after Thursday, 1600 point drop in the Dow Trump called the turn down expected, comparing the US economy to a patient undergoing surgery, "We have a procedure." He said, "like when a patient undergoes surgery, and it's a significant event, but I believe things are proceeding very well." And then on Friday, after the Dow plunged another 2200, points, Trump doubled down. "We are in a transition period." He said, "China played it all wrong. We will never change." 

And wouldn't you know vice president JD Vance was even blunter appearing on Fox News, he addressed the Americans living paycheck to paycheck, and told them the pain will all be worth it. At some point, his tone was cold, almost dismissive. This is a necessary sacrifice. Real patriots can handle short term discomfort. The message is clear, this is a loyalty test, not just for nations, but for Americans as well. If you're suffering because of these tariffs, the Trump administration wants you to believe it's your duty to endure that economic pain is the proof of your patriotism, that the higher the cost of groceries, rent and gas is the price of winning. That's what makes this moment so dangerous. Trump's tariffs aren't just bad policy, they're a new kind of political weapon, and he's wielding them with the full force of his presidency. So Donald Trump thinks of tariffs differently than you or me or expert economists. Trump sees tariffs not as necessary, not as a necessary evil or a complex economic tool, but as a cure all, a kind of economic swiss army knife that can restore American greatness, dismantle globalism, raise government revenue and reward political allies all at once. 

His April 2 announcement wasn't just a tactical move, it was a full embrace of his philosophy, the universal baseline tariff, the reciprocal penalty system, the threats to entire sectors, they're all rooted in a specific world view that America's wealth has been stolen by foreign countries, and bad trade deals and tariffs are the weapon to take it back. According to Trump, terrorists make imported goods more expensive, which in turn encourages Americans to buy us made products that shift, he claims leads to more factory jobs, stronger domestic supply chains, and a rebirth of American industry. 

In his speeches, he talks about steel towns rising again, auto plants bussing with activity and small businesses finally getting a fair shot. He also sees tariffs as a way to punish trade imbalances. If a country runs a big surplus with the US, Trump says that they owe us, and tariffs are how we make them pay. That's the logic behind the new reciprocal formulas. It's not about matching real tariffs. It's about punishing those who, in Trump's words, cheat at the gate. There's a national security component too. Trump argues that foreign Reliance puts America at risk, that if we depend on China for semiconductors or Canada for energy or Europe for pharmaceuticals, we're the bad- we're one bad week away from collapse. Tariffs, he says, fixes that by forcing domestic production of essentials, restoring economic independence and preparing the country for future crisis. 

And then there's the revenue angle. Trump and his advisors claims tariffs could generate as much as $6 trillion over a decade, money he says that could be used to fund tax cuts, eliminate income taxes on tips and Social Security and even pay down the national debt. In fact, Trump has floated replacing the income tax altogether with tariffs, citing the McKinley era model from the 19th century. But here's the scale. Before Trump took office, the average US tariff rate was about 1.5% by the end of his first term, it rose to about 3% but now, with his sweeping 2025 plan, analysts at the Yale Budget Lab, which is a nonprofit that studies fiscal policy, project that the average rate will soar to 22.5% that's the average US tariff rate, unbelievable higher than at any time since 1909 and far beyond what most living Americans have ever experienced without any common sense. His son Eric recently declared tariffs the biggest opportunity in the history of our country. 

But Trump's view isn't just economic, it's ideological. He sees globalization as a betrayal, a scam perpetuated by elites who sold out American workers. Tariffs, in his mind, are a way to roll back that betrayal, restore sovereignty and put the United States back on top. He invokes the past, constantly praising the high tariff days of McKinley and the glory years before 1913 when the US supposedly grew rich by protecting its markets. Personal history plays a role too. Trump's world view on trade was shaped during the 1980s when he railed against Japan for flooding American markets with cars and electronics. That era cemented his belief that tariffs are the best way to fight back his first term trade war with China, despite mixed results, only reinforced that instinct he believes he won to Trump. The logic is simple. If you make imports more expensive, you'll sell more American products. If you punish other countries hard enough, they'll play fair. If you generate enough tariff revenue, you can slash income taxes and supercharge growth, and if you ignore the critics, you'll look strong, decisive and patriotic. 

It's a closed loop of political theater and economic nationalism. Any downside, inflation, market crashes, retaliation. It's dismissed as fake news or framed as a sacrifice worth making for a greater cause. But as you'll see in the next section, this vision of how tariffs work, it's not shared by economists. It's not shared by most business leaders or most global trade experts. The next piece is where we take off the MAGA colored glasses and look at what's really happening on the ground, in the markets and in people's lives by the morning of April 4, 2025 just two days after Trump's sweeping tariff announcement, the Dow Jones had plunged a staggering 3800 points, a 13% collapse in less than 48 hours. This kind of sharp drop is what economists refer to as a market crash, a sudden, severe decline in stock prices that reflects panic, uncertainty and a breakdown in investor confidence, global stocks reeled. Oil prices fell, the dollar lost ground, and bond yields spiked as investors scrambled to process the chaos, economists at JP Morgan raised the odds of a global recession, a synchronized slowdown across multiple countries, to 60% if the tariffs remained in place in most presidencies, this kind of financial shock would trigger a coordinated effort to reassure markets. 

But this is Trump's second term, and reassurance isn't the strategy. Instead, the White House line has been clear. This is going all according to plan. I'm going to the golf course. Trump dismissed Thursday's 1600 point drop as expected, comparing the economy to the sick patient, which we talked about earlier. However, he did say China played it all wrong. And JD Vance says the pain will be worth it. We're building something long term. Critics interpreted a different kind of message being conveyed, that elites are asking working class families to simply suck it up. 

Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, a former finance executive and long time Trump ally, echoed the logic, "you don't fix a broken economy without upsetting some numbers," he told reporters, "what we're doing is restoring leverage. That's what strength looks like." On this other side of the fence. Heather Cox Richardson on April the fourth, in her Letters from an American, her news column, described how the administration is framing the collapse as some kind of economic purification. "The administration has presented the market crash as a calculated purge, not a mistake, but a cleansing, she wrote. Trump reposted a conspiracy style video on his social media account claiming that he was crashing the markets on purpose as part of the secret game that could make you rich, the video falsely acclaimed that Warren Buffett had praised Trump's moves as the best economic decisions in over 50 years. 

Of course, Berkshire Hathaway and Buffett immediately denied the claim. All such reports are false. Richardson noted that in March, Buffett had actually called tariffs an act of war. To some degree, Trump has also posted China played it all wrong. They panicked the one thing they can't afford to do. Then, just before the markets opened, he added to the many investors coming into the United States and investing massive amounts of money, my policies will never change. This is a great time to get rich, richer than ever before, when the markets cratered again, he followed up by saying, only the week will fail. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has issued some more sobering statements. Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday that the tariffs are highly likely to increase inflation and risk throwing people out of work. 

Economists at JP Morgan raise the odds of a global recession to 60% if the tariffs remain in place. The administration's internal process has drawn heavy criticism, according to reporting by the Washington Post, Trump rejected proposals from economic advisors and agency officials and instead opting just three hours before the announcement on April the second for a formula that he devised himself, that formula which determines tariff levels by dividing a nation's trade deficit minus services by the value of its imports, don't ask me to explain any of this, and then halving the result has no economic precedent. I quote, I don't even know who the quote is from, but I quote, "he's at the peak of just not having a fuck anymore" one White House official told The Post. Bad news stories? Doesn't give a fuck. He's going to do what he's going to do. 

Gosh, despite frantic efforts by right wing media to spin the crisis, consumer sentiment has plummeted. Financial Times, data reporter John Burn-Murdoch published a new polling showing that Trump's economic policies now have the worst approval ratings of any administrations since the data began. His tariff driven chaos has produced a spike in economic uncertainty on a par with the COVID pandemic. Nearly 60% of Americans expect the economy to deteriorate, and they're deeply worried about job losses and inflation. Businesses have already begun to stockpile goods to delay the hit, but experts warn that price hikes could start within days if the tariffs take effect as scheduled. The timeline is immediate. 

Companies are bracing for shipping delays, input shortages and cost spikes across sectors, and ordinary Americans already dealing with high grocery bills and rent may feel the impact before their next paycheck clears, and yet, inside Trump's orbit, every drop in the Dow is viewed as validation, every backlash a sign that they're hitting the right targets, every export warning more proof that the elites are afraid. Trump has reportedly told his team not to cave to Wall Street and seize the volatility as evidence of his power. As Richardson summarized, this isn't a bug, it's the feature, and so the message from Trump world remains unshaken. Keep Calm and tariff on. That's it for episode 19. 

In Episode 20 we'll shift the focus from Trump's view of the world to what leading economists think about the rollout of tariffs and the real world impact. It's not  economic genius, it's economic malpractice. And how are everyday Americans, consumers, workers, families, feeling the squeeze? What are the hardest hit industries saying behind the scenes? What's happening in Congress, on the farm and at the grocery store, and just how much pain will the MAGA voters tolerate if this trade war drags on. That's next time on surviving Trump episode 20: The Fallout. 

Before we go, I have two things for you. Jump in, the full transcript, and links are online, and now it's your turn challenge what you've heard. Share what hit home. This isn't passive listening, it's political survival. And talk to me. Love the show. Hate it. Think it's missing something. I want to hear all of it. Don't just scroll by. Help shape where this podcast goes next. And some humor to leave you with from social media; Are you aware that Trump levied tariffs on The Heard and McDonald islands a territory without people? But they do have about a million penguins. Anyway, The Heard and McDonald islands are part of Australia, and could conceivably be used to register companies there and avoid the tariffs. They can't now, Trump's team was too thorough. They caught that loop. Another one at dawn we ride. See you in the streets, fellow freedom fighters, remember no throwing fish. Remain peaceful, but we have demands. Imagine, in 50 years, kids will have to answer this on a History test, and it's not a trick question. Which of the following did Trump not tariff? A, Switzerland? B, Canada, C, penguins, D, Russia. 

And in case anyone missed it, thus far, there is a new account on threads. It's @PenguinsAgainstTrump. Their posts bio and moniker, which suggests that even if the crafty penguins previously posted only a little chicken threat to the United States trade deficit, the game has changed and its flippers up. Until next time, stay engaged, stay informed, and most importantly, stay In the fight. This is Bella Goode, signing off.