Sitemap
Ruminato

Fiction, Essays, and Ruminations

Member-only story

TARIFFS

The AI Presidency and Tariffs

When AI is used to set tariffs, silly things happen

4 min readApr 4, 2025

--

One obvious negative feature of the MuskBrat and AI presidency has made itself known in a bigly way. The techbros, who have the emotional maturity of twelve-year-old boys discovering phone porn, apparently convinced the mad king to set tariffs using AI.

I can sort of imagine them jumping up and down with cheese balls on their head, yelling, “Let’s use AI to do tariffs, let’s use AI!”

Two kids jumping in the air
Images licensed from Adobe Stock

I say “apparently” because I have no direct proof, only the goofy results that remind me of the six-fingered hands of early AI art.

To wit: There’s the Heard and McDonald Islands, which were hit with ten percent tariffs. The exports of those small islands that will feel the most pain? Hold on, let me ask someone who lives there.

I’ll be right back.

Okay, thanks for waiting. I’m back now. Nobody lives there [CNN]. There are no exports. The last inhabitants of the Heard and McDonald Islands left in 1877. I assume they left when their trade in elephant seal oil dried up.

The islands are part of an Antarctic outback of sorts (Australia even owns them!), sitting alone as cold southern Indian ocean waves relentlessly hammer away at them, and…

--

--

Ruminato
Ruminato
Charles Bastille
Charles Bastille

Written by Charles Bastille

Author of MagicLand & Psalm of Vampires. Join me on my Substack at https://www.ruminato.com/. All stories © 2020-24 by Charles Bastille

Responses (2)