These Cartoons NAIL Trump's Tariff Stupidity

Exclusive cartoons from Michael de Adder

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Apr 09, 2025

By Ben Meiselas

Hi Meidas Mighty, Ben here. I’ll keep this quick. I just want to take a moment to thank this incredible community for all the kind words and support you continue to show as we add more important voices to the Meidas+ Substack. It means the world to us.

Today, we're honored to share a special treat with you—some more powerful and thought-provoking work from legendary political cartoonist Michael de Adder. His art speaks volumes, and we’re proud to showcase it here. If you like Michael’s work, you can also subscribe to his Substack. I’ll leave a link to it right below this paragraph. Also, consider joining now as a paid subscriber to help us continue to grow this independent media platform. Without further ado, I’ll let Michael share his latest and take it from here!

By Michael de Adder

3-D Chess

As we watch the most clueless man ever to occupy the Oval Office — and that’s really saying something — his supporters still insist that, when it comes to tariffs, Donald J. Trump is playing 3-D chess. The phrase “playing three-dimensional chess” implies a level of strategic genius so advanced that the rest of us, mere mortals stuck on the regular chessboard, just can’t grasp it. But Trump doesn’t even seem to know that a tariff is a tax — something most people learn in ninth-grade social studies. It’s a fee on goods entering the country, paid by the citizen, not the government. How can someone be playing upper-level trade strategy when they don’t even know what a tariff is?

Liberation Day

Cartoonists love it when politicians label their own stupidity. And in the case of one of the dumbest policies ever to see the light of day, Donald Trump went ahead and did just that — boldly declaring April 2nd “Liberation Day.” Not April 1st, oddly enough. On this so-called Liberation Day, Trump plans to impose the most sweeping tariff hike since 1930, when the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was signed into law.

But tariffs don’t liberate. They almost literally put shackles on anything you might want to buy from another country. Hardly liberating.