- President Donald Trump’s tariffs have made trade policy a hot topic on social media.
- Elon Musk and Steve Hanke shared clips of Milton Friedman talking protectionism and globalization.
- A Dave Chappelle joke and a clip from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” have also been making the rounds.
President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs have put the internet in a frenzy — and people are turning to Milton Friedman, Dave Chappelle, and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” to highlight what’s going on.
Trump’s announcement sent stock markets sliding, vaporizing trillions of dollars of value over three days.
Elon Musk — the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who marshaled his vast wealth and clout to get Trump reelected and launch a massive government cost-cutting drive — shared a video on X of Milton Friedman, the godfather of free-market capitalism.
The Nobel-winning economist says in the clip that no single person could make even a simple pencil by themselves, as it’s a product of global cooperation and specialization.
Musk’s point was probably that many modern goods, from electric vehicles to spacecraft, are built using materials and components sourced from across the world, meaning broad tariffs can significantly raise the price of making them.
Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University who served on President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, shared a different clip of Friedman quipping that a tariff "protects the consumer against low prices."
Several denizens of social media shared a clip of comedian Dave Chappelle from a 2017 standup special poking fun at Trump's desire to return manufacturing jobs to America.
"So iPhones can be $9,000? Leave that job in China where it belongs. None of us want to work that hard," he joked.
"I want to wear Nikes — I don't want to make them," Chappelle added.
Another X user posted an AI-generated image of Bill Ackman making a pair of Nike sneakers, joking the billionaire investor and Nike shareholder would wind up on the factory floor once the tariff chaos plays out. "Nice photo," Ackman replied.
People also dashed others' hopes for a fun and decadent summer using the line "girl the tariffs," nodding to concerns that higher import taxes will reignite inflation, increase unemployment, and slow the economy.
Several commenters shared a clip from the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," in which a professor drones on about the history of tariffs and how raising them exacerbated the US economic downturn in the 1930s.
The memes and clips may be lighthearted but they speak to the importance of tariffs and trade policy, and the real-world implications of trying to upend the status quo.