When Fiction Becomes Reality (July 23, 2018)

In global capitals

Sounds of war drums

Being beaten

Once more.

Senior civil servants

Scurry between offices

Briefing political masters

Possible retaliatory targets.

Reviving fears

Of global tariff war

Last seen

During the 1930s.

Republican president

And dominated Congress

Passed Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

Protecting economic interests

During the early years

Of The Great Depression.

Gifting U.S. presidency

To the Democratic Party

For two decades (1932-52).

Are we walking

With our eyes

Open wide shut

Into a toxic wilderness

No one escapes unharmed?

Accepting

As holy gospel

Rantings of a man

With pathological need

Telling half-truths.

Claiming knowledge

Fully restoring America

As global leader

Once more.

Boasting

Tariff wars are winnable

America will win.

Counterintuitive

Historical observations

Business and economic leaders

Publicly present

Empirical evidence

Drawing dire warnings:

Hundreds of thousands jobs lost

Multi-billions dollars wiped out

Economic development and wealth

For the U.S. alone.

American tariffs

Exploding atomic bombs

Targetting everyone

In radioactive fallout.

Instead

Selective tariff application

To guilty countries

Like using a hammer

Banging nails down.

Will local economies devolve

Into barter base systems

As hyperinflation crushes currencies?

Like Latin America's

Bitter 1980s experience.

Each step forward

Into swirling cesspool

Hope fades

Underbrush grows back

Obscuring all pathways

For quick settlement.

Awaiting

The next shoe drop

On the global economy

From President Trump.

Therisa © 2018