The ultimate tariff is simply the requirement that goods be made by hand, by humans. In this future America, when we buy clothes, we have to buy them on Etsy—and Etsy’s rules are enforced by the FBI. Every time they capture a floating brick of Temu shirts, dropped by some fleeing speedboat, they display it on a card table for the local news:

“These Chinese junk clothes were trying to take American housewives’ businesses away. Now, Sergeant Hernandez will set them on fire. Look how well they burn—that’s pure polyester. Just the fabric, without a historical-clothing tag, would get you five years for artificial fiber, aggravated. Imagine if we still used that stuff! Why, the shepherd could not afford his bread and cheese, the cotton-picker his energy drink… everywhere, the economic fabric would collapse. It’d be like the late 20th century.”