Tariffs as War

[justaprogressive]

While there is nothing fundamentally funny about Donald Trump’s presidency, some of his policies, as Stephen Colbert and others regularly point out, register well above 9 on the Richter scale of ridiculosity. One current example of life under Trump imitating farce is his proposed 39 percent tariffs on Switzerland.

The farce I have in mind is the musical comedy Strike Up the Band, with books (it had two versions, one in 1927, one in 1930) by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind (who also wrote the definitive Marx Brothers comedies) and a score by George and Ira Gershwin. It features an American cheese mogul so infuriated by Switzerland’s efforts to block U.S. tariffs on their cheese that he finances a war in which the U.S. conquers Switzerland … almost (it’s a comedy, after all). The war is so identified with his business interests that, thoughtfully, it is named after the cheesemonger: the Horace J. Fletcher Memorial War.

In its 1927 version, the show so openly and scathingly satirized the American involvement in World War I—the business interests that had pressured the government to go to war, the wave of jingoism and the suppression of free speech that followed that decision—that audiences didn’t take to it. The watered-down 1930 version, however, was a Broadway hit.

Fast-forward to last week, when Donald Trump imposed a ruinous tariff on Swiss imports, despite Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter flying to D.C. in an attempt to strike a better deal with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and then in a phone call with Trump himself. The U.S. is running a $40 billion trade deficit with Switzerland, for which, not that it matters to Trump, Switzerland is hardly to blame. The nation manufactures high-end watches and precision tools not made in the U.S., makes pharmaceutical products, and also refines gold bullion and bars that are marketed on right-wing U.S. websites and sold to right-wing U.S. goldbugs and occasional readers of The Wall Street Journal editorial pages. None of the Swiss factories or gold refineries were offshored from the U.S.; most are venerable Swiss industries that only a limited number of American businesses have chosen to engage in.

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-08-11-trump-tariffs-as-war/]

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. He threatens to do something then that country hands him money under the table

[Celerity]

2. kick