Of course I believe in freedom of speech, but Marco and the Felon-in-Chief CERTAINLY do not, so this is clearly a smoke screen. And frankly, I suspect that any previous examples of this happening are in the interest in basic human decency. The fact of the matter is that American businesses doing business internationally have to be held accountable for the laws of the countries they are operating in as well, so this all sounds completely ridiculous.

It won’t hit all at once for a lot of different reasons. Retailers’ back stock is not subject to tariff because it has already been imported. Raw material lead times for products assembled in the US will be longer than products imported ready for store shelves. Apple recently made the news for importing planefuls of iPhones the weekend before the tariff was applied. Smaller businesses won’t be able to do stuff like that, but big corporations will have likely done similar things to soften/slow price increases. And, until additional duties go into effect worldwide, lots of companies had already diversified their manufacturing out of China for US-bound products because of the already existing tariffs from Trump’s first term.

But once the companies have to pay the higher price, so will we all.

At my last job, I started shortly after the union had negotiated a one-time payout of $500 for every associate, at the cost of the $2000+ bonuses department heads received yearly. The savings for the company were immense of course, because the recurring cost of paying bonuses was gone. And the masses were happy to vote for a free (as far as they were concerned) $500 payment. I still find myself wondering how many yay votes ended up as department heads down the line and realized how utterly stupid that was. But most won’t have done, and simply got free money.

I’m not sure that tactic could possibly work here - there would have to be a contingent of people who actually wanted that in the first place - and as far as I can tell, no Greenlander even wants to touch the US with a 1,300 mile pole.

They’re in spring right now, and Tazmania is below freezing and snowing in some areas literally this very moment. So I guess it does. It is VERY far south, almost as far south as the tip of Argentina.