There’s a classic episode of The Simpsons in which Homer gets a gun. He thinks his awesome gun is great for everything: home defense, opening beer bottles, whatever. When Marge says she doesn’t want a weapon in the house, Homer replies, “A gun is not a weapon, Marge, it’s a tool. Like a butcher knife or a harpoon, or … or an alligator. You just need more education on the subject.”
How Homer thinks about guns is not all that dissimilar to how Donald Trump thinks about tariffs. Or if you want an even more dated pop culture reference, the Trump administration talks about tariffs the way Chevy Chase did in the old “Saturday Night Live” parody commercial for “New Shimmer”: It’s a floor wax and a dessert topping.
On one hand, the president believes that tariffs make us rich. “Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,’’ he said on the campaign trail. Last week in his address to Congress he said, “Tariffs…
