Welcome back to the week in review told from the perspective of The Free Press’s least-informed columnist. If it’s messy it’s because we’re having an office party, and I can’t miss lawsuit opportunities like that. I recently told my TGIF helper Sean that blonds such as himself don’t age well, so he should enjoy his youth. And that was just this Tuesday morning—at night, and there are going to be drinks? By next week I’ll be in jail.
But first: Tickets are selling out fast for our live debate on AI in San Francisco. Bari’s moderating and I’ll be there (in the lobby having cocktails with my cousins, debating who our grandmother loved most). I hear that inside the theater there will be another debate, and it’s over whether the truth will survive artificial intelligence. Tickets are here! Let’s get to the news.
→ Liberation Day: The Trump administration announced massive new tariffs across the board, calling it, bizarrely, Liberation Day. The tariffs include one for 34 percent on China, which seems like a lot but is generally reasonable. But it doesn’t end there. No. Trump slapped a 47 percent tariff on Madagascar. Why, you ask, must he target those cartoon penguins? We now have tariffs on the uninhabited Heard Island and McDonald Islands too, in case those actual penguins get any ideas. Norfolk Island was hit with 29 percent tariffs, even though it exports nothing to the U.S. We have a 50 percent tariff on the tiny, impoverished kingdom of Lesotho, necessary since everybody knows Basotho blankets should be made in Ohio by the MyPillow team, and that’s how we make America great.
The thinking is: All these countries have big tariffs on U.S. goods, so why shouldn’t we put some dramatic pressure on them? In Trump fashion, it’s a big and chaotic move, with each tariff based on a simple calculation that people quickly figured out. No delicate finagling and diplomacy on Liberation Day. No fighting with your brother on Liberation Day. Keep it respectful and don’t ask questions and don’t get your good shirt dirty. Anticipating the tariffs, Goldman Sachs bankers—shrieking, running to their Doomsday Clock, checking the return policies on their yachts—raised the risk of recession to 35 percent. The economist Larry Summers called it “masochistic” and “the worst stock market experience in five years.” And the Hoover Institution is bringing out the big gun: Thomas Sowell. The stock market cratered. And have you seen the price of Liberation Day wreaths this year?
Here’s Howard Lutnick explaining how necessary all this is: “The European Union won’t take chicken from America. . . . They hate our beef because our beef is beautiful and theirs is weak.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. They hate our beef because of how beautiful our beef is. Our beef, which grazes on shredded Teflon and plastic shower curtains to create a marbling of microplastics. They’re jealous.