The House That Alzheimer Built
Let's roll the dice and see what happens. What can possibly go wrong?
💰 What Warren Buffett Says About Tariffs
The greatest investor of the last 70 years or so is Warren Buffett, known as the Oracle of Omaha. He knows a bit about business in more than just one narrow sector - railroads, insurance, utilities, manufacturing, retail, energy, technology, electric vehicles, financial services, and others. Let's see what he has to say on this topic.
"Tariffs are actually — we've had a lot of experience with them — they're an act of war, to some degree."
"Over time, they are a tax on goods. I mean, the tooth fairy doesn't pay 'em!" (said with a laugh)
"You always have to ask that question in economics: Always say, 'And then what?'"
"Trade should not be a weapon. The United States won. We have become an incredibly important country, starting from nothing 250 years ago."
"A world that adjusts to something very close to free trade … more people will live better than in a world with significant tariffs and shifting tariffs over time."
"If we actually have a trade war, it will be bad for the whole world … everything intersects in the world."
"It's a big mistake, in my view, when you have seven and a half billion people that don't like you very well, and you got 300 million that are crowing in some way about how well they've done."
🧠 America's Economy Is Being Rebuilt by People Who Either Forgot The Past or Never Studied It
Tweeter D is Tweeter Dumb
We have a long history with tariffs. There is no need to relearn the mistakes of the past.
We forgot that tariffs don't work.
We forgot that trade wars raise prices, not wages. We forgot that protectionism protects nothing without production. We forgot the inflation, the carve-outs, the retaliation, the quiet layoffs.
And we're about to forget something else: we already won. The American economy is the envy of the world. Low unemployment, steady growth, wages rising faster than inflation. Other nations study our playbook, not the other way around.
Tariffs are not the panacea for national debt and other ails.
This isn't policymaking. It's economic Alzheimer's.
🚗 What If I Want a Toyota or French Wine?
Are you going to force me to buy a product I don't want by making tariffs?
What if the American products aren't as good? What if I don't want them? This is what they had in Russia during the Soviet Union — you had to buy these horrible cars and other products made in the Soviet Union, whether you wanted them or not.
I personally tried buying American cars twice. Never again.
Tariffs don't make American products better. They just make foreign products more expensive. That's not competition — that's captivity. You're not choosing American; you're being herded there by artificial price walls.
When you tax imports to prop up domestic alternatives, you're not protecting American industry. You're protecting American industry from having to improve. You're telling consumers: "We know our stuff isn't as good, but we're going to make you buy it anyway."
What's the motivation for American manufacturing to be any good if they force you to buy them? Where's the incentive to innovate, to compete, to earn your business?
That's not economic independence. That's Soviet-style consumer control — with an American flag on it.
📱 What Tim Cook Says About Manufacturing
Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple, but before becoming CEO, this is what he did for Apple: manufacturing and supply chain management, especially as it relates to import/export. He's been the world's best at this for over 40 years.
"The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor costs. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being a low labor cost country years ago."
"The number one reason why we like to be in China is the people. China has extraordinary skills."
"China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like."
"The products we require need advanced tooling and the precision that you have to have in tooling and working with materials that we do are state-of-the-art. Tooling skill in China is very deep."
"In the US, you could have a meeting of tooling engineers, and I'm not sure we could fill the room. In China, you could fill multiple football fields."
🔧 Who's Making These Decisions?
Do you take your car to be repaired by someone whose only experience is washing a car in their driveway? We have people with no experience in manufacturing or supply chain management telling everyone how to redesign the global economy.
Donald Trump's business experience: renovating hotels and making golf courses. That's tiny service sector work with zero manufacturing, zero supply chains, zero international trade complexity. His current team? Collectively, along with Trump, they have zero experience in any of this.
Of course the people buying into their claimed ability believe their stories because they have no experience either. If you're voting for these people, who are you in this picture?
📚 Economic Theorists vs. Reality
History is full of economic theorists with no business experience who convinced or forced giant populations to follow their theories. Karl Marx never even sold newspapers on the street, but his ideas took hold anyway. Stalin and Mao impoverished both of their countries and led to death by starvation of about 80 million people through their economic incompetence.
Have we forgotten what lessons history taught us about Marxism, an economic theory that had only been tried on paper?
Or the Nobel Prize-winning economists at Long-Term Capital Management who had brilliant theories that looked perfect on paper - until they lost $4.6 billion in just a few months and nearly crashed the global financial system in 1998.
⏳ What Can Actually Be Made Here?
Tariffs only make sense if the things you're taxing can be made domestically — affordably, at scale, and on time. Otherwise, you're just levying a tax on consumers for products they still have to import.
We have low unemployment and our electorate does not want more immigration, so where are all these people going to come from? We're not just missing the skills - we're missing the actual workers.
Here's the truth:
Semiconductors? 3–7 years to build fabs.
Consumer electronics? 5–10 years, if ever.
EV batteries? Maybe 3–5 years with federal help.
Generic drugs? 3–5+ years due to FDA bottlenecks.
Apparel and furniture? 10+ years, and the jobs pay less than your rent.
Agriculture and heavy machinery? Already made here — but reliant on global inputs.
If you tax something you can't replace, it's not protection. It's a federal sales tax in disguise.
🧑💼 The Jobs That Come Back Won't Come Back for You
And even if the plan "works," what are we getting back?
Factories run by robots.
Jobs people don't want.
Wages too low to pay for the new, tariff-raised prices.
In 2025, unemployment is already low. Most companies can't hire fast enough. So what exactly is being brought back? Nothing that pays more. Nothing most Americans want to do. And if it does come back, it'll be a warehouse of machines and three guys with laptops.
What's the cost to bring these jobs back? According to Peterson Institute analysis of the 2002 steel tariffs, it cost taxpayers roughly $900,000 per job saved — some estimates put it at over $1.2 million per steel job. And for every job "saved" in steel production, we lost 75 jobs in manufacturing industries that use steel.
Is this about doing something good? Or is this about trying to get votes from swing states to tip the balance to one party?
Tweeter D is like one of those magicians who hypnotizes everyone on stage. "When I snap my fingers, you will wake up and now you are a pigeon." And just like stage hypnosis, people genuinely believe the performance - they're not faking it. They really think expensive foreign goods will magically transform into cheap American jobs. But that doesn't make it real.
📣 From Strategy to Customer Complaint
Even if the plan begins as a "tough-on-China" stunt, it will unravel at the register.
People will start to complain:
"Why is my phone more expensive?"
"I don't want a Ford — I want a Toyota."
"Why are my meds delayed again?"
"Why did groceries jump 2.3% last month?"
Then the carve-outs begin. Industries beg for exemptions. Allies lobby for waivers. Retailers panic. Congress members in swing states start screaming.
Soon the "universal tariff" collapses into a swamp of exceptions — just like last time.
You don't fix trade by guessing. You don't protect workers by making their lives more expensive. You don't win elections by asking voters to pay more for less.
💭 It's a Wish, Not a Plan
At its core, Trump's tariff proposal isn't strategy — it's fantasy. A wish in a red hat.
The idea is: make imports expensive, and American industry will magically roar back. But the labor pool isn't there. The capital isn't there. The timelines don't work. And the wages? Nobody's waiting around to sew socks in Indiana for $14 an hour.
It's a wish, not a plan. Why do you think they call it wishful thinking?
⚖️ Revolutions Without Consensus Fail
In the U.S., big changes don't stick unless most people buy in. This tariff plan has no mandate. It wasn't passed by Congress. It wasn't debated. The next administration — likely the other party — will walk it back or tear it out.
Sweeping, one-party experiments don't endure. They get reversed, defunded, forgotten.
In democracies, evolution works. Revolution doesn't. Especially when the revolution is launched by Tweeter D.
🦕 Jurassic Economics
Dinosaurs died out because other species did a better job. So with parts of our economy. Do we feel the need to remake extinct species within Jurassic Park?
In the movie, scientists thought they could control what they created. They had grand plans to bring back creatures from a bygone era and make them profitable. It seemed like such a brilliant idea - until the dinosaurs broke free and started eating people.
We're doing the same thing with dead industries. Taking economic models that went extinct for good reasons and trying to resurrect them with tariffs and subsidies. We think we can control the outcome, manage the consequences, keep the scary parts contained.
But what happens when these zombie industries break out of their protected habitats? When the trade wars escalate? When other countries retaliate? When supply chains collapse and prices spiral?
The scientists in Jurassic Park weren't the ones who got eaten. And the politicians pushing these policies won't be the ones paying higher prices at the grocery store.
As Warren Buffett warned: "The Tooth Fairy doesn't pay tariffs." But someone does. That someone is you.
🧵 Common Threads
The common threads here with this tariffs plan are:
Forgetting - We've forgotten the lessons of history, forgotten what tariffs actually do, forgotten why these policies failed before.
Cognitive decline - Building policy with a roll of the dice on half-memories and nostalgic fantasies rather than economic reality.
💭 A Few Parting Thoughts though not a complete list of potential problems
Consumer Psychology:
Tariffs create artificial scarcity and "protection" mindset that discourages innovation
Once we invest in protected industries, it's hard to admit they don't work
Timing/Coordination Problems:
Even if we could rebuild manufacturing, the 3-7 year timeline means we'd be building for yesterday's technology
By the time we build semiconductor fabs, the industry will have moved on
Allies vs. Enemies:
Tariffs often hit our allies (Canada, Mexico, EU) harder than actual adversaries
This damages relationships we need for security cooperation
Implementation Chaos:
Who decides what gets exempted? (Lobbyists, basically)
Small businesses can't afford the legal/compliance costs that big companies can
Historical Precedent:
Smoot-Hawley tariffs ushered in the Great Depression
Every country thinks they'll be the exception
This Tweeter D tariff plan is DOA - dead on arrival.