What We Talk About When We Talk About Tariffs

With apologies to Raymond Carver.

My friend Kevin Maddox was talking. Kevin Maddox makes a fortune selling novelty pickleball T-shirts on Etsy, and sometimes that gives him the right.

“The kind of tariffs I’m talking about, the other country pays,” he said.

The four of us, my wife, Debra, and Kevin’s wife, Bridget, were sitting around his kitchen table drinking. On the table a case of Truly sat cooling on a bed of ice.

Debra lifted a can from the ice and cracked it open. “That’s not how tariffs work though,” she said.

“My God,” Kevin said, a bit unsteady. “Don’t be silly.”

It would be night soon. I took a drink and held the can up to the dusky diluted sunlight seeping through the window: Wild Berry. My favorite flavor. The truth is, I thought Kevin was wrong. But by then our talk had grown old, and we were so young. What did the four of us, what did anyone know about taxes levied by governments?

“Who can say what a tariff is and what it isn’t?” I said.

“I can,” Debra said. “A tariff is a fee or duty paid by the company that imports products to the US Treasury,” she said.

“Close,” Bridget said. “It’s actually the other country that pays.”

“That’s right,” Kevin said, placing his hand on Bridget’s shoulder.

I found myself nodding along.

“Listen,” Debra said slowly. She looked around the table at us as if we weren’t her friends but strangers, as if we were no longer speaking the same language. “That’s not how tariffs work. Tariffs are paid by American companies.”

“No,” Kevin said. “Canada and China and Mexico will pay the tariffs. They will suffer. And tariffs will lower the price for American consumers.”

Debra placed her hands flat on the table as if she were trying to soak in the last rays of the sun before they vanished. She leaned forward. A vein on her neck pulsed and trembled like a river about to run over.

“Kevin,” she said, “where do you buy your T-shirts from?”

“China,” he said, grinning.

“As a Chinese importer, you will then have to pay a tariff.”

“That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t consider myself an importer.”

“All right,” Debra said, her voice straining. “You buy your T-shirts from China, slap on a pickleball pun, then you sell them, right?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“No matter how you define a tariff, no matter what you think it is, the price of the T-shirts you purchase will skyrocket.”

Kevin finished his Truly and placed the can sideways on the table. “If that happens, I’ll just raise the price,” he said.

“Then he’ll be making more money,” Bridget said, beaming.

“Yes, but everything else, the livestock, the vehicles, oil, will also go up in price. Americans will pay more for food, housing, vehicles, everything.”

Outside, a dog began barking. The light in the kitchen was so sparse I could hardly see.

“But I feel tariffs will bring prices down,” Kevin said. He lay his hand flat on his chest, partially covering the quote, I DINK, THEREFORE I AM, on his T-shirt. “I feel it here, in my heart. And what could be more important?”

Debra raised her hands and shook her head. She never spoke of tariffs again. What was there anyone could possibly say?