Amid Trump tariffs, the world responds with a free export: Humor
An evening show last week at the Hollywood Improv comedy club included poop jokes, a song about young people being too woke and a raunchy impression of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
There were no quips about President Trump's international tariffs, even from a comedian who had just posted a lengthy podcast episode about the on-again-off-again executive orders that have led to a global trade war and, many fear, could trigger a recession.
To get your fill of trade-related chuckles these days, there's a much more reliable, if unexpected, source: the official Facebook page of the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C.
The site has been rapidly manufacturing memes and sarcastic captions to capitalize — unrestrained by any tariffs — on a hot international export, namely jokes at the expense of the United States and its tariff-loving president.
One meme shows a red MAGA hat on a store shelf bearing a "Made in China" tag. The $50 price is crossed out, replaced by a tariff-inflated cost of $77.
Another cartoon — labeled "The Art of the Deal," after Trump's 1987 book — shows a pair of gambler's hands. One with the word "tariffs" on its suit sleeve draws from a deck of cards bearing percentages. The Embassy's caption: "But... the cards are made in #China. #Tariffwar."
In Canada, the premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, signed a decree in an oversized folder and held it up with his signature, à la Trump. "This order," he said, "it's a wonderful order. It's a beautiful order. This order is pulling American booze off the liquor mart shelves."
And on Norfolk Island — a remote rock in the Pacific Ocean with about 2,000 residents and essentially no exports to the U.S. — a children's book author memed a baffled-looking tropical wrasse fish. The caption: "When you find out Norfolk Island exports are getting hit with a 29% tariff ... guess that's one way to leave a fish floundering."
There are many ways world leaders, businesses and consumers are grappling with the growing threat of a global trade war, but perhaps the easiest — and, for some, the most therapeutic — is to rely on dark humor.
Joking about Trump's frenetic rollout of tariffs has become a common response to the altogether serious issue of an economic fight started by the president that has upended markets, led to boycotts of American-made goods and travel to the U.S., and sparked fears of a recession.
Some of the humor has a barbed, geopolitical aim in a war for the world's hearts and minds — see the Chinese government's fusillade of memes — but political scientists say that, for many people, humor is a natural response to stressful times.
Patrick Giamario, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and author of the book "Laughter as Politics: Critical Theory in an Age of Hilarity," said humor is an important part of the modern political process — and, for many, an attempt to make sense of events that feel overwhelming.
"The fact that we're laughing so much now is a sort of sign of how broken things are," Giamario said. "We laugh when things stop making sense."
Read more: Trump says Americans could feel 'some pain' from his new tariffs that triggered a trade war
In addition to global angst, the levies have spawned: References to Trump as a "domestic tariffist." Videos generated by artificial intelligence that show obese Americans toiling in garment factories. And lots of memes about over-taxed penguins angry about Trump's tariffs, which targeted a few barren, uninhabited subantarctic islands.
"Poor old penguins, I don't know what they did to Trump," Australian trade minister Don Farrell quipped to the Australian Broadcasting Corp. "But, look, I think it's an indication ... that this was a rushed process."
Trump's tariffs have kept much of the world's collective heads on a swivel. When he announced them, he said they would bring 'jobs and factories ... roaring back into our country' — despite skepticism from economists across the political spectrum.
On April 2 — which Trump dubbed "Liberation Day" — he announced a baseline tariff of 10% on imported goods from all foreign countries. He also announced higher rates, which he called "reciprocal tariffs," for countries he said were unfairly taxing American goods. Financial markets plunged.
A week later, Trump changed course, saying he would pause the so-called reciprocal tariffs for 90 days while leaving the universal 10% tariff in place. He wrote on his Truth Social account: "BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well." Markets surged.
Meanwhile, Trump escalated his standoff with China, hiking levies on Chinese imports — except, he later said, on electronics such as smartphones and laptops — to 145%.
Beijing retaliated by raising its levies on U.S. goods to 125%. The trade war was joined by a meme war.
Many of the Chinese memes portray American workers as unprepared for the kinds of jobs that bring products to their homes at cheaper prices.
During a press briefing last week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Chinese officials sharing AI-generated videos depicting Trump, Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk working in factories.
Read more: Canadian snowbirds love Palm Springs. But Trump is making them say: Sorry! We're leaving
"I have seen the videos," Leavitt said. "I'm not sure who made the videos or if we can verify the authenticity. But whoever made it clearly does not see the potential of the American worker, the American workforce."
Screenshots of Leavitt herself being trolled by a Chinese diplomat who accused her of wearing a Chinese-made dress in the White House briefing room also have gone viral.
"Accusing China is business. Buying China is life," Zhang Zhisheng, China's consul general in Denpasar, Indonesia, posted on X. "The beautiful lace on the dress was recognized by an employee of a Chinese company as its product."
Ramesh Srinivasan, founder of the University of California Digital Cultures Lab, said it is clearly strategic for the typically staid Chinese government to turn to memes and internet jokes to communicate its stance on the trade war, which is that it "is ridiculous and unnecessary."
"They're presenting it in a much more innocuous and funny way, and that's very, very intelligent," Srinivasan said. "It's a sign of the times."
Trump and his acolytes, of course, are veterans of the meme wars (his son and advisor, Donald Trump Jr., lists "Meme Wars General" in his Instagram bio). The president's meme-filled X, née Twitter, account helped launch his political career, as did his crude-but-catchy nicknames for his opponents: Crooked Hillary Clinton, Sleepy Joe Biden and Little Marco [now Secretary of State] Rubio, among others.
Srinivasan said Trump, the former reality television star, has long been skilled at using dark humor to his advantage, especially online, where he is "this kind of hybrid troll-meme person."
On the internet, the tariff jokes keep coming.
One widely-shared POV — internet lingo for "point of view" — video on TikTok shows a grumpy toddler striding officiously through an empty office. The caption: "POV: Me on my way to HR yet again for nicknaming my co-worker 'Tariff' for costing the company more than they're worth."
On YouTube, Penguins International, an apolitical conservation nonprofit dedicated to studying and protecting penguins, couldn't resist getting in on the fun.
Read more: What to know about the Trump tariffs upending global trade and markets
After Heard Island and the McDonald Islands — Australian territories where lots of penguins and no humans live — were listed on Trump's tariffs list, Penguins International announced an online Protest March of the Penguins.
"Waddle we want? No tariffs!" read one digital protest sign.
"Beaks up!" read another.
On Wednesday, the Colorado-based organization posted a YouTube video of the birds' annual migratory trek across the ice to their breeding grounds. As they squawked and brayed, a narrator said: "This year, they march in protest. They are peaceful. They are flightless. But they are certainly not voiceless."
"We wanted to take an unusual current event and make light of it and stir up some support for some penguins that are endangered and threatened to go extinct," David Schutt, executive director of Penguins International, said in an interview. Before the tariff announcement, he added, "most people didn't know about the islands that these penguins are on."
During an Easter-themed "Saturday Night Live" skit this month, Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, said: 'Many people are even calling me the Messiah, because of the mess I, uh, made out of the economy — all because of my beautiful tariffs. So beautiful. They were working so well that I had to stop them.'
On her "Good for You" podcast on April 13, comedian Whitney Cummings joked about Trump's stated motive of using tariffs to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S., where workers — especially young ones who prefer remote work — don't want them.
"I have nieces who are Gen Z," Cummings said. "They're not going to work in a factory. They won't even work at the Cheesecake Factory because that would mean they would have a boss."
American manufacturing largely moved overseas, she continued, because "no one in America believes they should be working for some corporation who treats workers badly. They want to be the head of the corporation who treats workers badly."
Two nights later, Cummings did a stand-up set at the Hollywood Improv, performing on a stage that has hosted comedy legends such as Robin Williams, Chris Rock and Eddie Murphy.
Cummings made some mildly political jokes — including one about growing more conservative after having a child and trading in her electric car for a gas model because gas stations are the only places where it's socially acceptable to leave a small child alone in a vehicle.
But during her short set, she stayed away from tariffs — which are, perhaps, funnier on the internet.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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