Nice piece from Astral Codex.

One of the reasons I am so vehemently opposed to them (besides the fact that they simply do not work) is the condescending way they were presented to the American people. They repeatedly lie to our faces as if we were children asking for another candy.

The Trump administration could have simply said they wanted to reindustrialize America and right certain economic wrongs with new, targeted tariffs…I would probably oppose, but not so vocally.

Instead, we were fed a fiction worthy of Santa Claus. We were told over and over that tariffs are a tax that other countries pay. This is, of course, false. But they kept up the ruse, even establishing a fictional “external revenue service” and calling Bezos directly to prevent Amazon from revealing the truth of who pays.

We are told they will create jobs (they won’t on net) but will raise trillions of dollars in revenue; they literally cannot do both at the same time.

We were told these tariffs would be reciprocal (an aim that is actually worthy), but instead we were fed fake numbers from the White House lawn, using a formula not rooted in economics, and erroneously applied, to top it off.

And yet, for all of this, there is no clear objective or endgame. One moment, tariffs are a temporary “negotiating tactic”, the next, a “permanent source of revenue”. Which is it?

As a taxpayer, I don’t just oppose the rationality of tariffs. I oppose them on an emotional level. I work hard every day, get taxed to hell, and now you’re raising those taxes further and insulting my intelligence by telling me that I am not paying them. I cannot think of a greater slap in the face to the American taxpayer.