Reciprocal Penguins by Clay Jones

Trump is putting tariffs on places where there are no exports…or humans. Read on Substack

The two major things about tariffs that Donald Trump doesn’t know are that tariffs are taxes and trade wars don’t work.

Trump may finally be starting to understand it’s American consumers who pay for tariffs, as he said in February that we may feel a little “disturbance” from them, and the “ultimate fruits of tariffs will be worth the pain.” In Trumpese, that means there’s going to be a HUGE disturbance (like living next door to a frat house) and pain, similar to a barbed wire catheter.

The people who don’t feel pain from tariffs are rich people, especially billionaire assholes like Trump and Elon Musk. Dickless fucos don’t have to worry about barbed wire catheters.

Trump called yesterday “Liberation Day,” which doesn’t make sense at all when it leads to Americans paying higher prices. By the way, I was in a grocery store last night, and the cheapest dozen of eggs was $5.35, and they got as high as $7 plus.

In yesterday’s announcement, Trump said, “For years, hardworking American citizens who were forced to sit on the sidelines as other nations got rich and powerful, much of it at our expense. But now it’s our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt.”

This is bullshit because the United States has the largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP). We have the largest economy in the world (thanks, Joe Biden). Our GDP is $90,000. By comparison with another rich nation, Germany’s is $58,000. This is also how Trump acts at tax time, crying that his buildings aren’t worth the amount he claims on loan applications.

Tariffs don’t reduce our taxes. It’s an additional tax. For the dunderheads who may be reading this, let’s say you increase tariffs on products coming from Heard Island, where only penguins live. Since penguins don’t actually export anything, we’ll have to make something up. Let’s say they export shiny rocks because I think I read somewhere that before a dude penguin can shag a nice lady penguin, he has to give her a shiny rock. So, these penguins are exporting shiny impressive rocks for wooing, and suddenly they have to pay a ten percent export tax to sell in the United States. The importer, NOT the exporting penguins, has to pay this tax. Do you think Walmart eats this ten percent? Of course not. You do, or whoever shops where they sell shiny penguin rocks from Heard Island (and McDonald Island.

Also, you can’t pay off the national debt with tariffs. The tariffs are designed to discourage Americans from purchasing foreign goods. If that works, then nobody’s going to pay those tariffs. The other idea is to force other nations to lower their tariffs, and if that works, then we lower ours again, and nobody’s paying for those high tariffs.

Ya see, kids, if the shiny rocks become too expensive for American consumers, then they stop buying them, and then the penguins will stop exporting them. That’s called supply and demand.

By the way, the shiny-rock trick works with humans, too. The rocks are just more expensive.

I’m not an expert on tariffs (nor shiny rocks), but it seems I understand it a lot better than the President (sic) of the United States. Feel free to correct me in the comments if I’m wrong on any of this.

Trump also said during his announcement, “The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 percent tariff on motorcycles. Meanwhile, Thailand and others are charging much higher prices, like 60 percent. India charges 70 percent, Vietnam charges 75 percent, and others are even higher than that. Likewise, until today, the United States has for decades charged a 2.5 tariff. Think of that 2.5 percent on foreign-made automobiles. The European Union charges us more than 10 percent tariffs.”

All that’s complicated as tariffs from a specific nation aren’t usually a flat rate, but are different per product. First, Trump’s numbers are wrong. Secondly, while we have low tariffs for imported cars, we charge a 25 percent tariff on pickup trucks, which is higher than what Europe charges for imported cars.

Trump ignores that Europe is our largest trading partner, and if they retaliate with “reciprocal” tariffs, then that hurts American manufacturers, and then DOGE won’t be the only one firing American workers.

Trump said, “Toyota sells 1 million foreign-made automobiles into the United States, and General Motors sells almost none. Ford sells very little. None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries.”

More lies. Our cars can go into other countries. China loves large American cars while Japan, which is a smaller nation geographically, does not. It’s not that our cars can’t be sold in Japan, but it’s that Japanese drivers don’t want them. Until two years ago, General Motors sold more cars in China than they did in the United States.

Trump said, “And with countries like Canada, you know, we subsidize a lot of countries and keep them going and keep them in business. In the case of Mexico, it’s $300 billion a year. In the case of Canada, it’s close to $200 billion a year.”

Lies. Our trade deficit with Mexico is NOT $300 billion but instead, it’s $172 billion. With Canada, it’s NOT $200 billion, but instead, $45 billion. These numbers are extremely easy to look up.

Trump said, “Canada, by the way, imposes a 250 to 300 percent tariff on many of our dairy products. They do the first, the first can of milk, they do the first little carton of milk at a very low price. But after that it gets bad, and then it gets up to 275, 300 percent.”

The truth is, this was the case, but it was renegotiated in the North American Free Trade Agreement during Trump’s first term (sic).

Trump also gave a history lesson. “Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then, in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with the Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy; it would have been a much different story.”

Trump sucks at history because the reasons are known. Lower-income people pay tariffs, so an income tax was added with the expectation wealthier Americans would take more of the burden, but as we have learned since 1913, Billionaire assholes aren’t all that ethical. I heard about one billionaire who doesn’t pay his contractors, lawyers, or taxes.

Trump says the Great Depression wouldn’t have hit if America “had stayed with the tariff policy,” yet it’s the tariff policy, the Smoot-Hawley Act, that raised tariffs, started a trade war that decreased world trade by 66 percent, and contributed to the Great Depression and World War II. Herbert Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley into law. The Northwest Progressive Institute ranks Hoover as our 39th best president. It ranks Trump dead last, and he hasn’t even started his depression and World War III yet.

Bragging about tariffs from his first term (sic), Trump said, “If you look at China, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term.”

Lies. He took in $75 billion from China, paid by American consumers, and had to bail out American farmers at the cost of $28 billion to American taxpayers after China retaliated. What you wanna bet those farmers voted for Trump? Yee-haw, fuckers.

Now, what do penguins have to do with any of this?

Heard Island and McDonald Islands are among several “external territories” of Australia that Trump has hit with ten percent tariffs. The World Bank’s data says the United States imported $1.4 million of products from Heard Island and McDonald Island in 2022, nearly all of which were “machinery and electrical” imports.

What makes those numbers suspect is that it’s believed no human has set foot on either island in the past decade. With the islands closer to Antartica than to Perth, it takes a two-week boat ride to get to the islands (they don’t have airports). The life you find on these islands are seals and birds, and the birds are mostly four species of penguins. Those penguins are king, gentoo, macaroni, and eastern rockhopper. I did not know there was a macaroni penguin. That’s the kind of shit that distracts me from finishing a blog because I have to Google “macaroni penguins.” Holy crap, they have huge yellow eyebrows.

The tariffs on two of the most remote islands in the world where no products are exported from, or where humans don’t even visit, proves that the Trump administration hasn’t fully studied tariffs. If they’re placing tariffs on penguins, then how much have they studied the tariffs they’re placing on the French or British? How high are the tariffs on Thighland and Yo-Semite? Shit, don’t steal that for a cartoon, my political-cartooning colleagues!

Also, these tariffs are NOT reciprocal, as Trump claims. It’s not like those penguins were charging us a ten percent tariff to start this trade war.

Penguins are notorious for not paying their debts. If you loan a penguin ten bucks, you will never see that ten bucks again, and he’ll probably waste it all on anchovies. How are we supposed to collect tariff taxes from freeloading flightless birds? All those penguins in zoos are on welfare and don’t pay for food or housing. And I hear the seals aren’t much better. They do more arfing than tariff-paying. The Internal Australian Revenue Service has reported it has never received a payment from penguins, and not even in shiny rocks. Penguins are almost as bad at paying their bills as Donald Trump.

We’ll see penguins fly before we ever see a check.

Creative note: I would have done something on a McDonald’s tariff, Trump’s favorite food, if penguins weren’t a part of the story.

Music note: I listened to Collective Soul.

Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see it)