The War On Tomatoes

The war on drugs is a joke. We spend $40 billion a year, and the proof that it's a failure is that any kid can get almost any drug they want in any city in America within half an hour.
-- David Sheff, American author

 "Price of Fentanyl will rise sharply"

Pretty big talk from a ketamine addict, but okay.

That was the Unelected Billionaire Guy who self-admits he can't comprehend social interaction, and who spent $44 billion destroying Twitter to prove it, explains how another socially inept billionaire is going to socially engineer America. 

They're going to use tariffs to engineer society. 

That's right. 

You see it, don't you? 

Sure you do. 

See, Trump told his supporters tariffs were about making stuff in America, about American jobs, about lowering costs for Americans.

Trump said "tariff" was his "favorite word" and the "most beautiful word in the dictionary."

That's what he said. Those are his words.

At dozens of rallies, Trump told his supporters that he'd impose tariffs to raise federal revenue and increase jobs and manufacturing in the US.

Raise federal revenue. 

Bring back manufacturing jobs in the United States. 

That's what he told you.

“We’re going to have 10 to 20% tariffs on foreign countries that have been ripping us off for years.”

“I do like the 10% [tariff] for everybody. The problem with the 10% is that some countries are much bigger abusers than others.”

“We’re going to be a tariff nation. It’s not going to be a cost to you. It’s going to be a cost to another country”

That's what he said, over and over. 

Tariffs are about jobs, about leveling the field, about revenue. 

That's what Trump said.

But, it was all a lie. 

Of course, it was all a lie. 

That's what Trump does.

And even if he actually believed the nonsense coming out of his sagging lips, tariffs don't work like that and even the hardcore rightwing Republican economists at the Wall Street Journal will happily tell you that. 

But the lie is even bigger.

The lie isn't just that tariffs don't work the way Trump wants to you to believe they will. 

The lie is that those things were never the plan.

What Trump and his MAGA cronies intend it to socially engineer America. 

See, now that he's been elected, suddenly tariffs aren't about jobs and federal revenue.

Instead, tariffs are suddenly about punishing foreign governments for apparently not fixing America's drug problem.

Elon Musk, alleged illegal drug addict and unelected director of a dodgy new government agency, declares: "Price of Fentanyl will rise sharply"

Yes, if foreign governments decide it's somehow their job to close our border to drug traffickers, the price of illicit drugs will probably rise sharply.

But there are a lot of iffy assumptions in that statement. 

Drugs are a supply and demand market with just-in-time delivery. 

Drug dealers aren't sitting on warehouses of drugs, just in case the supply chain gets interrupted. 

So, if you cut that chain, the prices will most certainly rise.

But it's not that simple and, funny story, I happen to know more than the average American about this. 

No, I was never a drug dealer or a drug user or a drug addict. 

I was on the other side. 

I was one of those people the government sent to stop the illegal drug trade. That's right. 

I spent a lot of time down there, south of the border, hunting drug runners at no insignificant risk to myself and my team. 

And we were good at it. 

We captured many, many drug mules and literally tons of cocaine. 

Tons. 

That's me, third from the right, bottom row, no not the bald guy but the one with the psycho killer buzz cut, with the radio and the funny looking bars on my collar. We're sitting on millions of dollars of cocaine somewhere off the coast of the Galapagos Islands. That's what those black plastic covered bales are, cocaine. Millions and millions of dollars worth. 

That was one bust out of I don't even remember how many. 

We set records for the number of prisoners and drugs captured. We took tons of cocaine of the streets of America. We sent nearly a hundred cartel members and drug mules to prison. 

And the price of cocaine on the streets of America changed ... not one penny. 

It wasn't just us, it was us and a dozen other operations like ours and border patrol and the DEA and cops in every town and city doing the same job and the very same time. There were a dozen other teams out there, all sitting on similar piles of cocaine. 

And all our work, all that risk, the millions it cost to send us down there, accomplished exactly fuck all.

It didn't do a damn thing, never has and never will. 

The price of cocaine on the streets of America was unaffected. The war on drugs is a joke and we lost long ago. 

But it's more than that. 

See, the entire operation is rotten. Those charged with commanding this war? They're all in on it. They have billion dollar budgets, they fly around in commandeered DHS and Coast Guard choppers, they have every bit of high tech kit and every rugged all terrain toy you can imagine, they're tricked out in every weapon system there is, and they make hundreds of thousands a year. They don't want The War On Drugs to end, it's their lives. It makes them important and powerful and they get to push everyone else around and they get to kill people. It's makes them bad ass, full on swagger. And it makes them rich, the corrupt ones anyway, and there are plenty of those, top to bottom.

That's what you learn, hunting drug runners. 

It's all bullshit. Theater. No one wants it to end. Not the drug lords. Sure as hell, not the Drug Enforcement Agency. Americans, be they scummy lowlife street thugs or white collar stock traders, they love drugs. We don't want drugs taken off the streets. 

There are so much drugs made and flowing into the US that when my team and I took tons of coke off the street, it had zero affect on the price of cocaine on the street. 

But let's say you actually could. 

Let's say you actually could interrupt the supply to a degree that it would actually affect the price of illegal drugs for the end user. 

"Price of Fentanyl will rise sharply"

Let's say you could do that, with tariffs or otherwise. 

And the price of opioids did rise sharply. 

Just like the price of booze did when a bunch of pinch-faced religious nuts imposed Prohibition on America. 

Americans didn't stop drinking though. 

No even a little bit. 

And as a result, you got a massive increase in violent crime, a massive increase in gang violence, see Al Capone et al. We make movies about how bad it was. About how much of an utter and predictable failure Prohibition was. 

You got a massive increase in illicit booze smuggled across the border and manufactured at home.

And you got a massive increase in alcohol poisoning deaths because people were drinking everything from drain cleaner to rubbing alcohol to moonshine they made in their bathtubs. 

And a lot of people got very, very rich, some smuggling the booze, some trying to stop the smuggling of booze, either was a good gig if you could get it. 

But what you didn't get was any less drinking. 

Just like you're not going to get any less drug addicts if you manage to choke off the Fentanyl supply. They'll just shove drain cleaner (or whatever the drug equivalent is) into their veins. 

Tariffs won't stop drug addicts.

Just like the War on Drugs hasn't stopped drugs, and instead only made things worse.

Trump told us tariffs were about revenue. 

About jobs. About buying American. 

But it was always about social engineering, just like Prohibition was.

It was always about punishing us for not believing Trump's bullshit. 

And we're all going to get punished, yes, we are. 

We're all going to pay because Canada didn't stop Mexicans from smuggling Chinese made drugs so Trump could take credit and declare himself a genius hero. 

Trump is going to impose a tax on foreign nations that we will pay. 

Not the foreign nation, us. 

American drug addicts aren't going to suddenly just stop using drugs because Trump imposed tariffs. 

Just like Americans didn't stop drinking because of Prohibition.

Drug cartels aren't going to stop smuggling opioids because tomatoes cost $20 each in American grocery stores.

And that what's going to happen. Most of the tomatoes in the US come from Mexico, with Canada being the second largest supplier. 25% tariff on tomatoes, including canned and processed. You think that can be offset by increased domestic production?

Remember, that was the original promise. 

Tariffs will bring back production to America. 

So, you massively jack up the prices of imported produce and American farmers will ramp up production and reap the reward while creating millions of new jobs. 

Right?

Except, Trump plans to use the army to round up millions of produce workers and put them in concentration camps for deportation. And farmers have no idea who will pick their crops as they are, let alone any increase in acreage. I mean, Americans sure aren't going to pick produce in the boiling San Joaquin Valley sun for less than minimum wage -- and what's that going to do to former [sic] heroin addict RFK Jr's plan to make us eat more healthy? But I digress.

Tell me, what do you think that's going to do to the prices in your grocery stores? In in your local pizza place? Etc? 

Eggs? You were mad about the price of eggs, and that's why you had to vote for Trump? The US imports $44 million worth of eggs from Canada every year. And about $7 million from China. What do you think the price of eggs will be on January 21st? 

Of course, isn't really just about tomatoes. Or eggs. 

It's about everything.

You, you personally, you're going to pay out of your pocket to finance Trump's childishly petulant plan to punish foreign governments for a drug problem caused by an American pharmaceutical company that will ultimately not affect the drug addicts in any fashion. 

Just like the War on Drugs.

Just like Prohibition.

When this idiotic plan results in economic chaos and massive increase in crime, and it will, Trump will cancel the tariffs, declare the fentanyl problem fixed, China punished, the border secure, and Republicans will cheer HUZZAH! We won! We won! 

We won.

That's what they'll tell you. 

But the only thing that will have actually changed is that you are paying $20 for a tomato. 

If you can find a tomato. 

If you want to fight a war on drugs, sit down at your own kitchen table and talk to your own children.

-- Barry McCaffrey, General, US Army, Retired, former Director National Drug Control Policy