Tariffs: Nothing to Crow About

A tariff is a form of financial self-mutilation in which one country delights in punishing another to force them to raise their import prices.

In the 1930’s, the over 900 tariffs levied by U.S. Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act worsened The Great Depression. During The Great Depression 44 percent of the U.S. population lived on farms. Today’s U.S. population lives 2 percent on farms.

My wife and I owned a small 7.5 acre ranch in Rimrock, Arizona, where we raised as many as 15 chickens at a time. Gathering eggs was as simple as opening a hatch and collecting breakfast. But raising chickens was not easy, as the game camera photo of our coop shows below. We needed to keep the chickens cool in summer and protect them from predators, such as the Bobcat shown circling our chickens in the photograph.

The United States is but three days away from food riots … if its supply chain is disrupted. While farmers produce 130 percent of what Americans eat, the food must navigate a complex, international supply chain to get food to the table of the 98 percent of Americans. Tariffs don’t need to disrupt what farmers are growing, rather disrupt one link in the supply chain to empty grocery shelves. The masses don’t get their eggs from a coop, rather as shipped in from 1,000 miles then fried and inserted between a toasted muffin slathered with buttery-like lab-grown spread, processed tinted cheese, and sliced 3 inch ham circles, wrapped in waxed paper printed with happy images, stuffed into a recycled paper to-go bag also printed with smiling marketing, all shoved out a glass portal to a Tesla that will drive its servant back home the 2 miles to her home cell, where her head will be wired into an AI network for task monitoring. Today, she exceeded expectations by returning with her happy bag in less than 10 minutes; thus, the AI gave her a dopamine rush by injecting a 30 second kayaking video into her work cycle. Those of us who have worked remotely know that the walls of tomorrow’s gulags will be virtual.

”Work Faster and Have a Happy Day!”

While the radical right cheers the building of walls and internment camps for “illegal aliens,” history shows that the walls and gulags countries built to keep the enemy out later became the tools to control the citizens in the event of political disruption, such as food riots. Who remembers Ronald Reagan’s speech to East Berlin and Russia, “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear down this wall!”? Who remembers Russia’s bare grocery store food shelves? The words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian dissident who suffered eight years in the Russian Gulag, remain true to the political milieu in the U.S. today-

Q: “Pastor Jim, what Pollyanna rubbish are you teaching? We need a Border Wall, high and tight. Don’t you want to be safe and secure?”

A: The Eastern Gate of Jerusalem has been sealed since 1541 AD. In Jewish tradition the Messiah will enter the Eastern Gate through the Mount of Olives. Christians also sing of meeting the Messiah just inside the Eastern Gate. We embrace the hope of the opening gate and the return of the King of Kings.

Lessons learned – 1. Gates sealed tend to remain sealed for a long time. 2. Considering point one, if a wall must be built, build it with a beautiful thousand gates of entry that portray hope, security, and new beginnings. Even Jesus taught, “I am the Door” (John 10:9). As ambassadors for Christ, our mission is to open doors to the shutouts. Some have morphed Jesus’ words into a Chernobyl mutation, “I have a door. It is locked. Go away! I got mine.”

The Eastern Gate of Jerusalem, also known as the Gate of Mercy. In Arabic — Gate of Eternal Life. Prophecy tells us the Messiah will return and enter through the Eastern Gate.

This blog morphed from a humorous quip about tariffs to an emergency flare how interconnected we are as a nation and with our allies, with whom we need to build alliances and not enemies.

Opening Doors,

Pastor Jim

For further study see https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-are-tariffs .

¹³ “No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” – Luke 16:13