The levying of insanely calculated – and not remotely reciprocal- tariffs on essentially every country – populated or not – will be one for the history books, certainly. The moniker “liberation day” might stick, but only in irony or in reference to liberation from any iota of pretense that truth might matter.

There will be much to say and many have started, but for today I single out the choice to place tariffs on the Marshall Islands. The US moved a population of Marshallese from Bikini Atoll to test nuclear weapons, promising to let them return “when safe.” They will almost certainly never return permanently. Nuclear waste has been stored on part of Enewatak Atoll, in a concrete dome now leaking. GDP per capita is just over 7000 USD and comes from copra production (used for coconut oil, feedstock, etc) and fisheries (mostly offshore tuna from their very large exclusive economic zone).

Marshall Islanders are not US citizens, but they are non-immigrants under the Compact of Free Association, and can live, work and study in the US and serve in the US military (Micronesia and Palau also fall under free association compacts, and Micronesia is also on the tariff list while Palau is not). We have taken their extremely limited land – dwindling in supply from climate change – for military use at Kwajalein. We have betrayed allies and former US territories right and left, and rewarded those seeking to destroy us (with Russia and Belarus left off the list), but this one is especially bitter to me.


The Thieves
Robert Graves

Lovers in the act despense
With such meum-tuum sense
As might warningly reveal
What they must not pick or steal,
And their nostrum is to say:
'I and you are both away.'

After, when they disentwine
You from me and yours from mine,
Neither can be certain who
Was that I whose mine was you.
To the act again they go
More completely not to know.

Theft is theft and raid is raid
Though reciprocally made.
Lovers, the conclusion is
Doubled sighs and jealousies
In a single heart that grieves
For lost honour among thieves.

Cover image: Marshallese story board telling island legends.