Tea, Tariffs, and Testosterone

Remember Brexit? I do. I remember watching the UK, in a fog of nationalist nostalgia, vote to cut itself off from the economic infrastructure of Europe—like a man sawing off the branch he’s sitting on while yelling about sovereignty. My friends and I just stared at the screen, shaking our heads. They actually did it. They pulled out.

I remember thinking, How come these crazy men get to decide this for the entire country? And why isn’t the country standing up and saying—oops, mistake. You’re outta here.

And now? I’m having the same feeling all over again. Only this time, it’s on my doorstep.

Trump wants tariffs. Again. This time, a blanket 10% tariff on every single imported item. No nuance. No exception. Just a universal tax on everything we don’t grow, drill, or make here. Phones, TVs, avocados, jeans, laptops, medicine—you name it. And just like Brexit, it sounds like strength, or so he’s telling us. And then you stop and actually do the math.

In my experience, Trump doesn’t sit in a room with advisors and weigh the pros and cons of a policy. He gets a bee in his bonnet, grabs on to something, and no one can talk him down. He doesn’t listen. He doesn’t study. He’s not thinking five moves ahead—he’s not even thinking two. He walks through the hallway of his own mind, sees something shiny, and latches on. And because he’s surrounded himself with people who don’t have the courage, or the job security, or, in some cases, the intelligence, to stop him, no one forces him to sit down and understand what he’s about to do. As in sit him down, face him close up, put your two fingers in front of his eyes and move them to your eyes. “Focus, Donald.”

He doesn’t remember economic history. To be fair, he can’t remember what he never learned. He doesn’t learn from the past. To be fair, I had no idea what Smoot-Hawley was either until I realized it was relevant to what we’re faceing so I looked it up. In case you’re as illiterate as I was, here’s the short version from AI. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was meant to protect American businesses during the Great Depression by raising tariffs on thousands of imports. But instead of saving the economy, it helped tank it further. Other countries retaliated. Global trade collapsed. Unemployment soared. Economists still cite it as one of the biggest mistakes of the era. Tariffs like these can have consequences. Huge ones.

And still—he can’t let go.

It reminds me of the bleach moment during COVID. Remember that? When Trump stood at the podium and suggested maybe we could cure the virus by drinking bleach or lighting up the inside of our bodies—maybe just stick a flashlight down our throat and give it a shot. It sounded like something he dreamed up in the middle of the night after falling asleep watching The Andromeda Strain. But it came from somewhere. Some doctor mumbled something about light therapy or disinfectants, and it locked itself into his brain like a catchy chorus. He couldn’t walk away from it. No matter how absurd, once the shiny idea landed, it stuck.

So when I ask myself where this tariff idea came from, I don’t imagine a long period of careful thought. Here is what I came up with. You decide.

Someone at Mar-a-Lago made a comment over steak about how China’s flooding the market with cheap goods, and he said, “That’s terrible. We should tax everything.” Boom. Policy. Another gulp of Diet Coke.

Or a Fox News chyron flashed “UNFAIR TRADE?” while he was watching Hannity, and that was that.

Or someone told him Biden supports free trade, so he went the other way. Fuck Biden.

Or he confused the word “tariffs” with “terrorists” and decided to crack down on both.

Or maybe—most plausibly—a billionaire whispered something about bringing back American manufacturing. Trump heard the word jobs (not inflation) and got excited.

Any of these scenarios would fit, because none of them require strategy, depth, or understanding. They just require impulse to feel the high of his own brilliance.

And that’s what this is. An impulse. Wrapped in bluster. Packaged as strength.

But here’s where I keep coming back to Brexit. That was about cutting off a continent. This is about cutting off the world. It’s not just a financial rupture. It’s a moral one. A rejection of the global order we helped build. A denial of the international rules we helped write. It’s not just about trade. It’s about trust. It’s about our standing. It’s about who we are.

Trump’s tariff plan isn’t a strategy. It’s a tantrum. And the cost won’t just show up on our receipts. It’ll show up in broken alliances, strained partnerships, rising prices, and shrinking credibility.

This is much bigger than Brexit. This isn’t just a break with the global economy. It’s a break with the moral principles we used to stand for.

And once again, I’m shaking my head and thinking—how is it that one man, chasing one shiny object, gets to drag an entire country into chaos? And, where are all the people who could stop him?