The Simplest Robber Logic

I don’t know how many people have been buried by the downturn in US and global stocks, all dragged down by the willful actions of Trump. With a single word from a politician, the value in those two lines of capital continues to rise. He claims it’s a “reciprocal tariff,” but in reality, it’s more like setting up tolls at checkpoints without any sense of fairness. This is the simplest form of robbery logic in the world, and the targets of these tax hikes are treated indiscriminately.

Regardless of whether allies are supportive or not, the focus remains on American priorities. Countries can’t escape the fate of being taxed. The tax rates themselves are also fascinating. People on the internet joke that it’s all calculated by drawing a table—for instance, a 34% tax increase on China.

In 2024, China exported $524.656 billion worth of goods to the United States, while importing $163.624 billion, creating a trade deficit of $361.032 billion. Divide $361.032 billion by $524.656 billion, and you get 68.8%. According to Trump’s formula, if you halve that and round it, you get a 34% tariff. The absurdity is that after “harvesting” the entire world, the US still insists on saying, “You can’t do that.”

Clearly, the United States is operating with a 19th-century colonial mentality to manage the economy of the 21st century, which is completely in line with a robber’s approach. The usual logic of a robber is simple: “I can do it, you can’t, and it’s all your fault.”

The US often imposes tariffs based on its confidence in its consumer market. This monopoly power in the buying market, combined with the US dollar’s dominant role in global trade, is the leverage Trump uses to wield the tariff stick.

From America’s perspective, it believes that it’s the one doing the world a favor by giving others access to this market. The purpose of tariffs is to collect taxes on imports and exports. Competition from local companies isn’t that intense until they’re suddenly faced with high-quality, low-cost products from abroad. Local companies can’t compete, so they resort to acting like bullies.

Raising tariffs on imports makes imported goods more expensive, which theoretically boosts the sales of local products. This offers some protection to local companies. If you raise my taxes, I’ll raise yours in return—it becomes a game of whose punches are stronger. It’s a fight of interests. To use an analogy, tariffs are like building a moat around a medieval castle. The wider and higher the moat, the more it blocks foreign goods, but it also traps citizens inside, preventing them from buying high-quality, low-priced goods.

Let’s use a simple story to illustrate this: Imagine two stores on a snack street—an American pizza shop and a Chinese hamburger joint. The pizza shop uses cheese from China, and the burger joint uses beef from the US. They used to pay a 5% toll and got along fine.

But one day, the pizza shop owner decided to raise the toll on beef to 25%, forcing the Chinese burger shop to increase its hamburger prices from 20 to 30 yuan. Customers complained. While pizza sales went up, the cost of cheese increased, reducing profits. The pizza shop raised the toll on cheese to 25%, but now the cost of pizza soared to 70 yuan. People turned to Vietnamese spring rolls instead. Prices across the street went up, sales plummeted, and workers faced layoffs. Other stalls suffered too—Japanese sushi became more expensive, German bread went stale, and even the street vendor selling roasted sweet potatoes couldn’t catch a break.

The truth remains: raising prices is easy, but lowering them is hard. Ultimately, the costs of a trade war are borne by ordinary people, which is why economists often describe tariff trade as “both sides lose when they sign the contract.”

In this round, the United States declared war on over 180 countries and regions, and as a result, retaliatory tariffs are being imposed worldwide. Trump’s core policy is to reframe the US’s economic difficulties as the result of a trade deficit, imposing tariffs on all exports to the US under the guise of “reciprocal tariffs.” Essentially, it’s a way to pass on the inflation caused by the Fed’s excessive money printing onto global consumers.