Meme Battle
Facebook is a battle zone. What used to be a “place” where folks would share stories about their kids, or try to sell old lawn furniture, or ask for that giant pothole to get filled; is now ground zero for our political wars. Somewhere in the middle of “Buy Wings at the Depot” and a “School Record relay team”, this appears:
It’s part of the ongoing battle for “your mind”, and you don’t even see it coming. One “meme” doesn’t make a dent, but the insidious impact of one after another, interspersed with “real life” stuff, seeps into your brain. Then, deep in the middle of the night (for me), you think about how persuasive this unrefuted, undiscussed, out-of-context statement might be.
Tariff’s in History
Other than in History class, most Americans don’t think much about tariffs at all. We might vaguely remember tariffs as part of the arguments between the North and the South prior to the Civil War. And, if you really paid attention, you might remember something about tariffs protecting American goods in the “Gilded Age” of the 1880’s and 90’s. Or maybe the 1930’s Smoot/Hawley Act, part of Republican President Hebert Hoover’s failed attempts to end the Great Depression.
But tariffs are front and center right now, even on Facebook.
Boston Tea Party
Americans should recognize tariffs. It’s part of our national “lore”, the legendary fabric of our “origin story”. In 1773, the British Government needed money to pay for the standing armies they kept in the American colonies. Those armies protected the colonists from attack by the Native Americans, but also kept the colonists themselves under control. So to raise revenue, the British instituted a tax on a staple import, tea.
Who paid the tax? The folks who consumed the tea, the colonists. Where did the tea come from? The British East India Company had a monopoly on the importation of tea. And why were the colonists upset about the tax (the tariff) on tea? Because they had no say in the law, no vote.
So a bunch of Boston’s finest citizens dressed up as “Indians” in the dark of night, marched by torchlight down to the harbor, boarded the British East India Company ships, and dumped hundreds of chests of tea into the sea. They used phrases like “No Taxation without Representation”, and had a catchy name for their little event, “The Boston Tea Party”.
Yep, we were fighting about tariffs before we were even a country.
In Fact, a Tax
Now, no one today is going to march in the dark of night on the Baltimore Harbor and dump giant cargo containers into the sea. But there are some important lessons from the Boston Tea Party that do apply today.
First of all, the British tariff on tea was, in fact, a tax. And the consumers of the tea, the Boston “Indians”, knew full well that they were the ones being taxed. So let’s not fall for the idea that the British East India Company then, or Toyota or Intel or Apple today, are going to “eat” the tariff costs. Just like the cost of tea, those taxes are going to be passed onto the consumers, us.
So when President Trump (claiming emergency powers when an emergency doesn’t exist) says that tariffs will cost “those other countries” money, he’s just wrong. The Tea Tax wasn’t paid by the British East India Company, it was to be paid by the citizens of Boston. The cost of our Intel chips (on almost every “smart” device) may double. And we, the modern citizens of Boston, will have to pay the difference.
Give It Up
And what about the glib Facebook line? Well, they’re right. If you don’t buy imported goods, you don’t pay tariffs. The problem for the colonists was that tea didn’t grow in the colonies, it grew in India. And, like today, the colonists were as addicted to caffeine as we are to coffee. So it was a tax on a staple good that colonists didn’t want to give up. (And, dumping the tea in the harbor didn’t make the cost of tea go down. But it did hurt the bottom line of the British East India Company, a loss that reverberated all the way back to their political friends in London).
So, let’s give up products that need “chips” (from Taiwan). Or give up the wood to build our houses (from Canada). Or give up shoes, 95% of them are imported. That way, we’ll never have to pay Trump’s tariffs. As long as we don’t have to give up coffee (99% imported). I’d put on war paint about that. And I wouldn’t dump it in the sea.
I’d sit down on the deck and make a pot.
