Complexity is a tax, and today U.S. companies are paying through the nose.
This article appeared in The Dispatch on December 3, 2025.
Looking back on this year (as one does in December), there’s been an undeniably huge amount of virtual ink—from Capitolism and everyone else—devoted to U.S. tariff policy. This, of course, is perfectly understandable given the major recent changes to said policy, the tariffs’ substantial economic, political, and diplomatic implications, and the fact that a certain president can’t stop talking about all of it. Indeed, with average U.S. tariff rates now having reached historically high levels via an erratic and endless series of executive branch proclamations and trade deals (as the chart below from the Financial Times indicates), a lack of such coverage would be downright scandalous.
