"OK, Mr. President, here's how tariffs work. See this card? This is Jimmy. Jimmy lives in America and he builds cars. This card here is a picture of the cars Jimmy builds. Jimmy would like to sell more cars, but some mean people in Germany send their hoity-toity cars, like the BMW on this next card, to America and sometimes people buy them instead of Jimmy's cars. Isn't that terrible?
So what you do, Mr. President, to make Jimmy happy, is put a tariff on those nasty German cars when those nasty Germans send them to America! Do you know what a tariff is? It's a kind of a tax that makes those cars more expensive, and then people would buy Jimmy's cars instead. Isn't that nice? Here's a picture of Angela Merkel. You know Angela; she's that mean German lady who wasn't nice to you. She looks sad in this picture because your tariffs will make Americans buy fewer German cars.
What is mean, sad Angela going to do? Why, she gets together with her mean friends at the EU who weren't nice to you, and they do tariffs on things they import from America! Here's a picture of a soybean. And here's a picture of natural gas. There's nothing on the card because you can't see natural gas. But now, because of these tariffs, America's soy beans and natural gas are more expensive and the Europe people won't buy them. Farmers in America - here is a picture of a farmer - will be sad even though Jimmy the car maker is happy."
What are you going to do now? Here is a quiz. You have 10 minutes to answer the questions.
1. If there are more car manufacturers than farmers in America, will you lift the car tariffs? What if there are more farmers than car manufacturers?
2. If the car tariffs make Angela Merkel sad, will you keep them even if Ivanka wants to buy an Audi?
3. Do you think Russian cars should be included in the tariffs? Why or why not?
4. Would you consider funding technology that would make it possible to make cars out of soy beans?
5. Beans cause gas. Should soy beans be used to make natural gas?
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Time's up... Oh, didn't you answer any of them? Would you like to look at the cards again? No? How about if I give you a hamburger?"
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