The Boy Who Cried ‘Tariff’

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who liked to cause all sorts of mischief and had a lot of fun playing tricks on the people around him.

Those fun tricks meant that everyone talked about the boy so that he became very famous, and then, when everyone needed someone to be in charge of the largest economy in the whole wide world, they chose the little boy.

One day, during a very boring economics briefing, the little boy decided to play a little trick. Suddenly, he shouted, “125% tariffs!”

Everybody jumped up, and all the markets started to panic, and a lot of people started to talk about these very big tariffs.

But when they came to see the naughty little boy and ask about the tariffs, he put a 90-day pause on all the tariffs.

Everybody told the little boy not to yell tariffs if there weren’t any tariffs, and the little boy said he wouldn’t, so then everybody went back to their lives.

But then the next day, it seemed that no one was paying the little boy any attention and had forgotten he was very powerful and that the tariffs were a really good idea actually. So then, once again, he cried, “Tariff! Tariff!” and once again, everyone came running and the markets went crashing down and everyone set their prices very high.

Once again, however, when they came to see the little boy, he said he had reduced retaliatory tariffs down to just 10% so that there were barely any tariffs at all.

So then everyone went back to their lives and tried to get a good night’s sleep and pretend that they had never heard the word ‘tariff’ in the first place.

Some say that the little boy is still yelling tariffs to this day, but now whenever he does, everyone knows not to listen because who knows what he will say the next day.

And then he got eaten by a wolf.

The End.

For more bedtime stories, click here: US Economy ‘Out Of UNO Reverse Cards’ Following Trump Tariff Block