While Fox News is bending itself into a pretzel trying to put lipstick on our dipshit president’s “Liberation Day” pig, it’s become obvious that Trump used ChatGPT to generate his simpleton’s “world tariff chart.”
Under Trump’s new global tariffs, American consumers will pay an additional $6 trillion in taxes — tariffs imposed on imported goods they buy every day like shoes and avocados — over a 10-year period. This amount, along with alleged savings from DOGE’s chainsaw excision of the federal government, will be used to pay for Trump’s second round of $4.5 trillion tax cuts for the rich.
It is a massive redistribution of wealth, taking from the poor to line the pockets of wealthy donors who put Trump back in office for that express purpose.
Trump used his idiot sharpie and drew himself a tariff chart
Trump has been teasing tariffs for months. After imposing, then withdrawing, then imposing, then withdrawing tariffs on our best friends and neighbors last month, he almost kind of had the start of a concept of a tariff policy last week. To launch it in true reality TV fashion, Trump set the announcement to great fanfare, calling a press conference to unveil his shiny new plan. He branded the whole event, and spent more time marketing “Liberation Day” than developing any underlying substance.
It shows. The simplistic tariff chart prop he foisted on the media looked like an afterthought. I started getting text messages from colleagues when the clownshow started. “He generated that table with ChatBot!” one texted. “Good one,” I responded. “No, I’m serious,” he said. “NFW,” I wrote. Then other colleagues started texting the same thing.
The theory flying around the internet, supported by convincing evidence, is that Trump threw his simplistic chart together using basic online AI from ChatGPT. When commanded to “make easy tariff policy,” 03 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, and Grok all produced the same answers spit out on Trump’s tariff chart.
Policy writer Steve Bonnell said on X, “I think they asked ChatGPT to calculate the tariffs from other countries, which is why the tariffs make absolutely no f—cking sense. They're simply dividing the trade deficit we have with a country with our imports from that country, or using 10 percent, whichever is greater.” In other words, it’s nonsense, based on a dangerously simplistic view of global trade economics.
Fox News has to figure out how to praise the falling stock market
Global markets expressed their outrage by delivering an immediate crash that eliminated over $3 trillion in market value. World leaders continue to express their shock over Trump’s economic suicide, sounding the alarm over tariffs so stupid they look like intentional sabotage:
- China, imposing a retaliatory 34% tariff on the US: “There are no winners in trade wars, and there is no way out for protectionism."
- EU’s commissioner: “Uncertainty will spiral … consequences will be dire for millions of people around the globe.”
- Germany's Chancellor: “Trump’s tariffs are fundamentally wrong and an attack on a trade system that has created prosperity all round the world.”
- Australia’s Prime Minister: Trump’s tariffs were “not the act of a friend.”
- The penguins: WTF did we ever do to deserve this?
Fox viewers, now over half the country, won’t hear, read, or see any of that. Friday, as world markets crashed, the folks over at Fox News focused on what’s in everyone else’s underpants. Their lead story was how strong Trump, the “New Sheriff in town” looked as he “warned” governors who “defy his orders.”
Not covering the actual news, Fox delivered its customary disinformation gems on Trump’s tariffs, leading with, “Secretary of State Rubio stands up to European leaders, says Trump is absolutely right.”
Enough with the gaslighting
Fox propaganda aside, J.P. Morgan is now predicting a 60% chance of a recession by year’s end, reporting that “This year's 22-percentage tariff increase amounts to the largest tax hike since 1968.” The Wall Street Journal predicts that April 3’s loss of more than $3 trillion in market value will likely continue to worsen.
Financial markets, predictably, have the jitters. Despite Trump’s messaging that “tariffs are tax cuts,” everyone else knows tariffs are a tax, and a regressive one at that, paid by working-class consumers.
By all indicators, Trump can’t master the complexities needed to develop a strategic trade package, and says he “couldn’t care less” about the price of cars.
Like a tyrant toddler with a singular focus on his playmate’s toy, Trump has been so fixated on 19th century tariffs he has silenced rational economic discussion. What we’re left with is a child’s tariff policy Alexa could have spit out, leaving markets and our own economy in freefall.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
