Puzzlepolitics

TL;DR:  it's the two-party system. Longer version: it's the two-party system. Yes, really. Full version: When Americans go to the supermarket, for every product they want to buy they are overwhelmed by choice. Cereals, tomato sauce, apples -- everything is available in all shapes and flavours, with multiple brands competing with each other and products coming from all over the world. I am writing this before the tariff-induced famine. When Americans go to the polls, it looks a little bit different. There are, realistically for most of the country, only two options. This is a problem because when choice is limited, quality isn't incentivised. Going back to the supermarket example, imagine that there are only two brands of cereals you can buy: well, that isn't really a lot of options, and you might very well end up buying the cereals that you "dislike the least" rather than the ones you "like the most". As if that was not bad enough, the only two brand...

20, 50, 41, 34 – these seemingly random numbers are actually some of the rates at which Trump was going to impose tariffs on imports. That is, before 34 became 145, and before everything else was set back to 10, and before he exempted laptops and smartphones altogether. There is, as the most observant among you might have noticed, a little bit of confusion coming out of the White House. Blanket tariffs on all products and all countries based not on any economics fundamentals but rather on a childish desire to balance the surplus/deficit ratio is an idea that is frankly not worthy of my criticism. Countless economists over the past 10 days or so have wasted copious amounts of words on why the economics of it is completely absurd. Politically, I sympathise with the ultimate goal of shifting some of the production of goods back into western countries, both because it is a matter of national security to not be completely dependent on other countries (especially where one country has a mono...

There is something wrong about Trump's tariffs, and it's not just the numbers being all over the place. There is something else, something that runs much deeper and that underpins every mistake by this administration: Trump is trying to explain very complex concepts in the easiest possible terms, oversimplifying reality to please his base. If you watched live, your jaw too must have dropped when Trump welcomed an auto worker to the stage -- someone, we're told by Trump, who "understands this business a lot better than the economists". While I don't doubt he might be better than whatever "economists" the Trump administration hired to set the tariffs, it is hard not to see the point Trump is making here: economics is simple, the "elites" are stupid, and I am here to explain to everyone how easy it is to get economics right. Except the global supply chains, trade deals, currency exchanges and goods flows are much harder than Trump can even hop...