In case you tuned in late …
Despite appearances from today’s media (social and otherwise), from which one might get the impression that the topics that everyone is yelling about are brand-new and pungently right now, the issues of tariffs and immigration have been central to the politics and social dynamics of these Untied States of America since their founding.
According to the Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary, the verses associated with Ambrose Bierce’s definition of “Tariff”, reproduced below, first appeared in 1888, in the “Prattle” column that Bierce wrote for the San Francisco Examiner. Readers will decide for themselves the degree to which these 135-year-old rhymes apply to the professed designs of the 47th (and last?) President of the USA.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba can only relate his experience living in a Sovereign State in which the tariffs on manufactured goods were so high, he drove a battered old car with a badly-rebuilt engine for nine years, until that engine blew out the very week of his final departure, he being unable to afford a better. In which another Sovereign State, seeking to unload its used cars (which it had legislated off its own roads to protect domestic manufacturers), found a willing dumping ground. Those cars were unreliable, unrepairable – and still out of YFNA’s financial reach.
It may ease the rest of the 46th PoTUS, who suffered the wrath of citizens for inciting high consumer prices in the course of actions taken to ensure citizens had the means to purchase anything at any price, COVID fans, to witness the downfall of his successor for inciting high consumer prices in the course of actions taken to force-feed the profits of his megacorporations.
TARIFF, n. 
A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the domestic producer against the greed of his consumer.
The Enemy of Human Souls
Sat grieving at the cost of coals;
For Hell had been annexed of late,
And was a sovereign Southern State.
“It were no more than right,” said he,
“That I should get my fuel free.
The duty, neither just nor wise,
Compels me to economize—
Whereby my broilers, every one,
Are execrably underdone.
What would they have?—although I yearn
To do them nicely to a turn,
I can’t afford an honest heat.
This tariff makes even devils cheat!
I’m ruined, and my humble trade
All rascals may at will invade:
Beneath my nose the public press
Outdoes me in sulphureousness;
The bar ingeniously applies
To my undoing my own lies;
My medicines the doctors use
(Albeit vainly) to refuse
To me my fair and rightful prey
And keep their own in shape to pay;
The preachers by example teach
What, scorning to perform, I preach;
And statesmen, aping me, all make
More promises than they can break.
Against such competition I
Lift up a disregarded cry.
Since all ignore my just complaint,
By Hokey-Pokey! I’ll turn saint!”
Now, the Republicans, who all
Are saints, began at once to bawl
Against his competition; so
There was a devil of a go!
They locked horns with him, tête-à-tête
In acrimonious debate,
Till Democrats, forlorn and lone,
Had hopes of coming by their own.
That evil to avert, in haste
The two belligerents embraced;
But since ’twere wicked to relax
A tittle of the Sacred Tax,
‘Twas finally agreed to grant
The bold Insurgent-protestant
A bounty on each soul that fell
Into his ineffectual Hell.
