GOP Economic Cock-and-Ball Torture

Republicans would rather wear a humbler than fix the economy.

President Donald Trump’s sycophants have been crowing that their dear leader has gloriously brought the stock market to an historic recovery from the crashout he inflicted, merely by reversing his disastrous policies which caused the precipitous decline. On April 9, after Mr. Trump announced a “pause” on the tariff plan that threatened to bring America into recession, the S&P 500 rose 9.5 percent, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 7.9 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite jumped 12.2 percent. On April 10, those fortunes reversed again, and the Dow fell over 1,000 points (approximately 2.5%), the S&P 500 dropped around 3.5%, and the Nasdaq Composite declined about 4.3%. In the future, I imagine, those same Republicans will also proudly discover that if they take their testicles out of the vise, their nuts will no longer be crushed.

It may seem crude and unkind to compare Party of Family Values’s submission to genital self-torture, but these same people, in the midst of an economic freefall that led some pundits to declare the “American age is over” and wonder if the dollar would still be the world reserve currency in a decade, attempted to codify a law that would restrict their own ability to oversee the same trade policy that is actively wrecking Americans’ investments and retirement accounts.

Dear reader, in case you doubted the disingenuousness of these GOP cretins, they snuck in a provision that “each day during the period from April 9, 2025, through September 30, 2025, shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on April 2, 2025.”

That National Emergencies Act is the authority under which Mr. Trump imposed the tariffs. Every six months, Congress is supposed to review—and, if necessary, revoke—any emergency powers the President claims under the National Emergencies Act. By declaring that 175 days do not count as calendar days—tell my stock portfolio that, you raggedy motherfuckers—the GOP surrendered the Congress’s oversight function without saying aloud how cucked and debased they have made themselves. They voted to make it illegal for themselves to object to Mr. Trump’s radical, unilateral reordering of U.S. trade policy into a Smoot-Hawley revival tour until at least October.

I am sure Speaker Mike Johnson, who requires his son’s assistance in order to stave off pornography addiction, thinks this is quite clever. But before he gives away the Congress’s power of the purse, he ought to consider resigning in disgrace so as to let somebody who wants to uphold their Article I responsibilities take his chair.

After former Vice-President Kamala Harris’s loss to Herbert Hoover come again in the 2024 election, I reflected that: “[w]e can say the economy is good according to all the metrics by which economies are measured, but voters are likely disinterested in the pedigree of a stallion when they are about to be trampled.” Five months later, under Mr. Trump’s erratic leadership, we can no longer say the economy is good according to the metrics by which economies are measured. (GDP slowed from 2.7 percent growth to 2.8 percent contraction, consumer confidence has been yeeted off a fucking cliff.)

I said at the time that “[p]eople d[o] not only want prices to stop rising. They want[] them to revert to 2019 levels.” This has not been a priority for Mr. Trump’s regime. Instead, he seems hellbent on jacking them up further with nightmarish, ChatGPT-generated, bullshit tariffs. More than doubling the price of Chinese imports will be catastrophic to American businesses. This administration says, “Main Street, not Wall Street,” but has obviously not been inside a Main Street shop recently—even gas station bongs are coming from Alibaba and DHGate.

Small businesses cannot manifest new suppliers whenever Mr. Trump’s caprice finds a new target. This administration’s trade policy will disproportionately ruin them. The Russell 2000 index, which tracks small-cap stocks—the kind of companies who, if they were people, my friend, shower after work—is in bear country, reflecting a decline of over 20 percent since its peak under former President Joe Biden.

Half the TikTok hustle culture grindset lifestylers make their living dropshipping; killing the de minimis exception (the rule that lets cheap imported shit bypass customs) will effectively destroy their business model and send them back to the gig economy or cubicle. Now, in addition to other levies, “[a]ll relevant postal items containing goods [from China] … valued at or under $800 … are subject to a duty rate of either [145]% of their value or $25 per item (increasing to $50 per item after June 1, 2025).” Mr. Trump has told businesses that rely on low-cost imports, which is to say, “business”: Drop dead. I cannot imagine much of a future for Etsy if people must start making their own arts and crafts again.

Let us imagine how this screws over a hypothetical Zoomer entrepreneur named Tyler, who is not a drop shipper but still sources his product from China. He is 24 and sells some sick dab rigs on eBay. His supply chain is typical for an online bong salesman—he orders a selection of bulk glass from DHGate, imports them into the U.S., and stores them in a storage unit near his apartment. He lists them on eBay, packages each item with an excessive amount of bubble wrap, and drops them off at the post office. Until this week, this setup worked. His inventory would go through customs under the de minimis threshold. No duties, no hassle.

Pre-“Liberation Day” catastrophe:

• Product cost (DHGate): $25

• Inbound shipping (bulk, per unit): $2

• Packaging (box, wrap, tape): $2.50

• Domestic shipping (USPS Priority): $12

• Total per-bong cost: $41.50

• Typical eBay list price: $50

• Gross profit per bong: $8.50

Post-“Liberation Day” catastrophe:

• Product cost: $25

• Tariff (145% of product): $36.25

• Inbound shipping: $2

• Packaging: $2.50

• Domestic shipping: $12

• Total per-bong cost: $77.75

• eBay price: $50

• Gross loss per bong: -$27.75

These are the direct costs tied to each unit sold. The loss is incurred before considering platform fees, his storage unit lease, returns, breakage, time spent fulfilling orders, or additional overhead. Even if Tyler had no fixed overhead at all, he would still lose nearly $28 on every sale. To compensate, he would have to raise the price per-bong by approximately $36, meaning a broke college stoner would have to pony up $86 instead of $50. This will necessarily shrink his sales, so his prices might have to climb yet higher to pay off the overhead.

Tyler just wants to sell his glassware without having to check whether the President has declared economic martial law on the entire fucking globe that week. Most Americans want the same thing: to buy what they need, sell what they can, and run their businesses without having to watch the news to see if prices are jacked up because of one man’s deranged conviction that trade deficits are a moral failing. (Tyler, for instance, has a permanent trade deficit with his marijuana dealer. He gives the weed man money in return for drugs. Tyler does not sell pot, so that trade imbalance will never be reduced.)

Why does Tyler the TikTok Zoomer matter? Because Tyler did not consent to having his fiscal nuts clamped. Even if Tyler voted for Mr. Trump, he did so because he thought the dotard would make his business better, not impossible. He has no safeword to make this torture stop—he has a congressional representative who is supposed to do that for him. Mr. Trump said: “Will there be some pain? Yes, ... and it will all be worth the price that must be paid.” But Tyler does not want to pay any prices, he wants to make money, and escape pain. Stephen Moore, an economic advisor to Mr. Trump, said: “We’ve all lost a lot of money…. It’s a question of what the pain threshold is for the American people and the Republican voters.” Republicans are the ones who enjoy having their testicles stepped on, not Tyler. Tyler has never once thought he might want that in his life, and would prefer to not test his pain threshold or lose money.

Mr. Trump’s tariffs function as a direct tax on every American consumer—the largest of our lifetime—and he seems either unaware or completely indifferent to how it might land on people living in the real world. This is why we have a Congress—to manage the power of the purse, restrain executive overreach, and redress our grievances. But today’s Republicans would rather indulge their boss’s masturbatory protectionist fantasies even when it hurts them. Like I said: cucked and debased.