According to most dictionaries, ‘tariff’ is a noun and means a tax on imports into a country. Sometimes, there is a tax on exports too. Very rarely, ‘tariff’ is used as a verb, but such use is now more common thanks to President Donald Trump. He has ‘tariffed’ most countries of the world including two islands — Heard and McDonald — where the only living creatures are penguins, and the penguins export nothing to the United States.

Seven states obsession

Mr Trump believes that stiff tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. will ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA). On April 2, 2025 he unveiled a table of tariffs. As the table unravelled, it became clear that the ‘calculation’ of tariffs was based on a simple formula that was adopted to make sense to simpletons. The tariff for a target country was one-half of the trade deficit with the target country divided by the value of the goods exported to the U.S. by the target country.

In 2024, it was Republican red in the vast swathe of America between the two coasts minus four states. The 2024 American presidential election was reduced to one question: who will win the seven swing states or most of them? Mr Trump won all the seven states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and took their........

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