The AI Presidency and Tariffs
When AI is used to set tariffs, silly things happen
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, have 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!”
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.1 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 where only the puffins can hear you scream.2
There’s also the whaling station at the Norwegian territory of tiny Jan Mayen, which faces 10% tariffs. On what? Nobody knows. Nobody lives there. What the tariffs impact is an AI mystery that only the tech bros can answer. A handful of military types come and go to and from the islands, presumably trying to make sure that the Thing is still contained.
It’s a different story for the New Zealand territory of Tokelau, which consists of three tiny islands in an atoll that is reported by some to be somewhere in the South Pacific. The 1,600 people who frolic on those atolls would be insulted by my description, but I don’t care. We live in the mad king’s world. Their feelings don’t matter.
Tokelau is said to have exports amounting to $100,000 per year. What does it export? Nobody knows. But they are now facing ten percent tariffs. Rawr!
The islands having the worst luck in the world are probably the Saint Pierre and Miquelon islands. They are paying a heavy price for their proximity to our mortal enemy, Canada ( the islands are near Newfoundland!), for (presumably) speaking French, and, worse, being a French territory. They have a relatively large population of 5,000 souls, and are getting hit with 50% tariffs on their massive export business of processed crustaceans.
I suspect the AI logic here was that as a French territory near Canada, the French could use it as a launching pad of sorts to move amphibious troops in to help defend Canada as part of the NATO treaty that states that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all. So the islands needed to take an extra hit. Who says AI ain’t smart? Not me.
I’m guessing here. I don’t know how AI thinks about these things.
For some reason, the tech bros’ AI program also targeted poor Lesotho, which is a landlocked nation stuck in the middle of South Africa for some reason. That little country is facing 50% tariffs on its mineral and textile exports. Maybe this is not an AI thing, but is instead because some Lesothan pissed off someone in Musk’s family a few decades ago.
The mad king’s AI program is even hitting our own military bases in Diego Garcia and the Marshall Islands with tariffs. I don’t know why, but that seems sort of strangely brilliant to me.3
In other mostly unrelated news (I think), as I write this, the mad king’s AI-created girlfriend, Laura Loomer, who has not met a conspiracy theory she won’t promote, has reportedly just emerged from one of his gold-plated bedrooms. Although she undoubtedly found no working parts to play with, the mad king nevertheless immediately fired three National Security Council (NSC) members that were on Loomer’s shit list.4
So she clearly did something to make him happy. Like you, I am not interested in knowing what that might be.
As the New York Times reports it, the NSC, which is headed by Mike Waltz of SignalGate fame, had a meeting. There, the indomitable AI creature known as Loomer “proceeded to excoriate them in front of Michael Waltz, the national security adviser.” Nobody knows why they were targeted by AI Loomer, only that they were.
You might fondly remember Waltz as the guy who invited a journalist into top, top secret meetings to develop war plans against a remote desert tribe:
As hard as I try, I can’t make shit like any of this up.
America has turned into Season Six of Fargo.
Notes
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
Lendon, Brad. 2025. “An Uninhabited Island, a Military Base and a ‘Desolate’ Former Whaling Station. Trump’s Tariffs Include Unlikely Targets.” CNN. April 3, 2025. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/03/business/trump-tariffs-uninhabited-islands-intl-hnk/index.html
For the life of me, I can’t find a source for that puffins quote. But I know I’ve heard it somewhere else. No luck Googling it, though. If you’ve heard/read it, leave a comment! So, like AI writers, I’m now officially a plagiarizer. Dammit!
ibid, CNN
Haberman, Maggie, Jonathan Swan, and Ken Bensinger. 2025. “After Meeting with Laura Loomer, Trump Fires National Security Council Officials.” The New York Times, April 3, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/us/politics/trump-meeting-laura-loomer.html?unlocked_article_code=1.804.zwts.mBk_O4cHnnxJ&smid=url-share.
Apparently I'm not the only one who realized this:
https://futurism.com/trump-tariffs-signs-ai
You called it! Even HCR mentioned use of AI in her “Letter”. Good read.