ÐÔÊӽ紫ý

Well, I suppose it was just a matter of time. From the vantage point of hindsight, it was foolish of me to think that I could avoid it forever. No matter how careful I was, I guess it was just inevitable from the outset that I would fall prey to this foolishness. So now I join with countless others, victims all, as I consider my next steps. Anyway, whatÐÔÊӽ紫ý done is done. I have been tariffed.

Before I tell the full tale, I must give you some backstory. As many of you know, I live in an old house, and I spend a good deal of my time fixing one thing or another. Now that I am an old guy, I had begun to hire this work out, but the fellow I have been using cannot be found, and I suspect he has been deported. He did good work and was reasonable when it came time to settle up, but he had the misfortune of looking “Mexican,� and in these parts these days that is not such a good idea. So, I am back to doing my own work, and many of my repair projects involve a hammer and a stepladder.

Oh, and my wife likes glass top tables. I can’t forget that. And gravity being what it is, about once a year I drop my hammer onto one of these glass top tables, which 100% of the time necessitates the purchase of a new piece of glass. This happened again last week. So now we are up to date and ready to talk about tariffs.

Well, I thought we were, but I sense that some of you are wondering why I don’t just move the tables before I work above them. Sigh. My wife also wonders that, and I’m just going to ignore all of you because I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life.

So, I went to the glass store with my measurements, and my glass guy and I walked back into the shop to the thick glass used for tabletops. I recognized the sheet of glass, because many of my former pieces of glass had been cut from that very sheet. He went to work while I wandered around, and when he finished, we met at the cash register. The new glass tabletop was $70. Last yearÐÔÊӽ紫ý tabletop cut from that same sheet of glass was $35. I had been tariffed.

I know what you are going to say, so let me just jump in front of you. This was not a textbook example of a tariff. The sheet of glass had been in the shop for who knows how long, and I think the glass came from Toledo, Ohio, anyway, so how could this be an example of a consumer paying a higher price due to tariffs? Human nature is how.

Let me explain. Assuming you believe that the covid epidemic was a real existential threat and not just something that Dr. Fauci came up with because he was feeling mischievous one day, you will remember that prices of pretty much everything went up due to “the supply chain� being disrupted. This disruption was a real thing. According to the World Health Organization, which America is no longer a member of but that is a topic for another time, well over 700 million people worldwide contracted covid, and somewhere around 8 million people died from it, including 1 million Americans. And these are just the reported numbers.

The thing is this: all prices went up, not just those whose supply was affected by the illness. And when the epidemic was finally controlled, those prices did not go back down to where they started. This is an example of the human nature element I was referring to. Covid provided permission; it was a handy third-party to blame. And the same thing is happening now with the tariff situation.

When some prices go up because those products’ cost has been affected by the imposition of a tariff, all prices go up. And when this disastrous boondoggle of a policy does a sufficient amount of damage to what was once a healthy economy and is rescinded, the higher prices will remain.