Tariffs decide who wins and who loses. They shape supply chains, wages, investment and prices. They determine whether industries survive and whether communities prosper or decline. So when any leader claims the right to impose them at will, they are claiming the right to redistribute wealth and opportunity without consent. That is not about efficiency. It is about arbitrary authority.
Second, the episode reminds us that neoliberalism has always been about moving economic power away from democratic control.
Tariffs are neoliberal now…..
As is redistribution!
So, is he anti-EU now? All those tariffs on Chinese EVs that they impose…
I think all his opinions reset at midnight so might be different tomorrow.
When George Orwell was writing 1984, he was likely using examples he could see around him for things like “doublethink”.
The Fat Controller is a prime exemplar.
Never mind different opinions on separate days. He can hold two contradictory positions in his mind at the same time without resolving either. He spouts supporting drivel depending on what he thinks will get him ahead at any given instant.
I’m not convinced he can even manage one.
they are claiming the right to redistribute wealth and opportunity without consent.
I thought that was the whole basis for his philosophy (if you can label his ramblings as a philosophy).
He’s about as coherent as a toddler. My daughter, aged four or five, within the boundaries of her then knowledge was far more coherent than Spud will ever be.
Democratic control of economic power? We’d all be fucked.
What he is really saying is “orange man bad”. Any arguments for or against tariffs are superfluous to his quest for followers.
Tariffs are neoliberal now…..
Of course. Each time he uses the term neoliberal it means exactly what he wants it to mean in that context, nothing more, nothing less. If you think it contradicts the way he’s used it before that’s your problem for being a neoliberal not his.
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
And there we all were thinking Humpty Dumpty was an egg, not a potato.
Does he even care what the words mean? Increasingly he seems to be writing just to make his followers feel the correct way.
Changing his views and subverting his principles to satisfy his market, then? Oooh, that must hurt.
I’d love to see the Sage excluded from the coffee beverage market in Ely by way of blanket ban from all the cafes. Cvnt.
Democratic governments weilding economic power is moving economic power away from democratic control now is it?
Now do taxes, Ritchie.
Doesn’t he think all your money belongs to the state already?
I’m still unable to detect the difference between the Sage of Ely & the current Labour government or the previous Tory government. They all seem to be equally incoherent about the same things.