The world’s collective intelligence has once again proven to be a rounding error, as the latest round of American tariffs sends the global financial markets into a hysterical tailspin. It is a spectacle of such profound, unadulterated stupidity that one cannot help but admire the sheer commitment to self-destruction. The Great American Tariff—that archaic, blunt-force instrument used by people who failed basic arithmetic but excelled at shouting into microphones—has returned to the stage, and the audience is currently trampling itself to death trying to find the exit.

Let’s be clear: nobody is a hero here. On one side, we have the nationalist right-wingers, those intellectually stunted specimens who truly believe that slapping a 20% tax on a toaster will magically resurrect a steel mill in Ohio that’s been a drug den since the mid-eighties. They speak of 'sovereignty' and 'strength' as if the global supply chain wasn’t a tangled web of codependency that they are currently hacking at with a rusty machete. They want to return to a golden age that never existed, where everyone had a union job and no one had to know where Vietnam was. It is a delusion of grandeur fueled by a fundamental misunderstanding of how anything is actually made.

On the other side, we have the performative left, who will spend the next six weeks weeping on television about the 'instability' and the 'international order' while secretly salivating at the chance to implement their own brand of bureaucratic strangulation. They hate the tariffs because they weren't their idea, and because the tariffs don't come wrapped in a layer of sanctimonious environmental regulations that would achieve the exact same result: making everything more expensive for the very people they pretend to represent. They want a globalism that is 'equitable,' which is just code for a system where they get to decide which billionaire's yacht gets the most tax credits.

And then we have the 'markets.' Watching the financial markets react to these tariffs is like watching a skittish chihuahua in a thunderstorm. These are the supposed masters of the universe, the high-frequency traders and the hedge fund titans who claim to use complex algorithms to navigate the future. In reality, they are just a bunch of terrified gamblers in expensive suits, weeping into their scotch because the line on the screen turned red. Asia is, predictably, the hardest hit. The factory floor of the world is realizing that when your biggest customer decides to lock the doors and start eating its own shoes, your business model might have a few flaws. The Nikkei and the Hang Seng are doing their best impressions of a lead balloon, proving that 'emerging markets' is just a fancy term for 'places we exploit until it becomes politically inconvenient.'

There is a delicious irony in the American taxpayer paying more for every single item they consume in the name of 'saving' them. It is the ultimate display of the 'America First' ethos: setting the neighborhood on fire just to ensure your house is the warmest on the block. The American consumer, that bloated tick on the hide of the global economy, is about to find out that 'bringing jobs back' actually means 'paying four dollars for a pencil.' But they will continue to vote for it, because the alternative is admitting that the world has changed and that their precious 'exceptionalism' is just a brand of cereal that went stale in 1954.

The global economy is not a machine that can be tuned; it is a delicate ecosystem of greed and necessity. By introducing tariffs, we are effectively dumping bleach into the coral reef and wondering why the fish are floating belly-up. The experts are, as always, surprised. They are always surprised when gravity works. They will hold summits, they will write white papers, and they will go on cable news to bloviate about 'strategic pivots' and 'resilience.' But the truth is simpler: we are governed by morons, financed by cowards, and inhabited by people who think that economics is a team sport. The markets are flailing because the illusion of stability has finally dissolved, leaving nothing but the cold, hard reality that we are all trapped on a sinking ship steered by people who think the iceberg is a promotional opportunity. Enjoy the crater, everyone. You’ve earned it.