Reason's Swiss tariffs vignette about Trump sums his grifting nature

18 November 2025

Vignettes often tell us all we need to know

For instance, from Reason, regarding Donald Trump. Here, in excerpts:

When President Donald Trump ordered a whopping 39 percent tariff on all imports from Switzerland earlier this year, he did so, of course, by claiming there was a national emergency.

Officially, Trump's executive order pointed to "large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits" that, the president claims, "constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States."

Right from the start, that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

For one, Switzerland had minuscule tariffs (an average rate of 0.2 percent) on American imports.

The very existence of a U.S. trade deficit with Switzerland (which totaled $38.3 billion last year) seemed to undermine the entire logic behind Trump's trade war.

If having higher tariffs than your trading partner was the secret to ending trade deficits, as the Trump administration seems to believe, then why did America have a trade deficit with a country like Switzerland in the first place?

Good news: That emergency is now over!

The White House announced over the weekend that tariffs on imports from Switzerland would be cut from 39 percent to 15 percent—the same level charged to goods from the European Union.

Cynical observers might note that Trump's decision to reduce the tariffs on Swiss goods came just days after a Swiss delegation lavished the president with a variety of expensive gifts.

Trump reportedly received a gold Rolex watch and an engraved gold bar estimated to be worth $130,000.

It is illegal for U.S. presidents to accept gifts worth more than $480, but the White House says Trump accepted the gifts on behalf of his presidential library, which likely makes them legal.

The moral? — Trump can't help himself

He is arguably — based upon his personal and professional history — a morally unprincipled, wannabe powerful, con-oriented grifting moron. Not so different, really, from his dementia-exhibiting predecessor.

Rather than being irritated with Orange Man Bad, perhaps We the People should be annoyed with ourselves. For so regularly permitting people from this grasping American Archetype to access power and — directly or indirectly — steal wealth and wellbeing from the rest of us.

As Caitlin Johnstone said a couple of days ago, with regard to the exploitive form of capitalism that governs the Western world:

This whole [capitalist] dystopia is built on top of an underclass of low-wage workers keeping the gears of industry turning; if they all quit today, the entire economy would be instantly obliterated.

Saying “If those low-wage workers want better wages they should stop being low-wage workers” is telling a man to stop drowning while you are holding him underwater by standing on his head.

And what’s really crazy is that in this horror movie, the villain is entirely within reach.

He’s standing there taunting everyone at the top of the room from a platform where he controls the water levels, and his legs are right there within grabbing distance.

But instead of grabbing those legs and pulling him down so they can drain the room and save everyone, they’re fighting each other for air and saying anyone who drowns is to blame for their own drowning.

Blood of patriots and tyrants?

PeteFree.com

Reason's Swiss tariffs vignette about Trump sums his grifting nature