Many have complained of uncertain tariff policies (here and here and here). Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping are uncertain. This October’s water levels on the Mississippi, Rhine, and Yangtze rivers are uncertain. June energy prices are uncertain. Commerce persists and constantly adapts to such uncertainty. Uncertain derived of Latin certus: not fixed, not resolved, not decided…
Commerce finds perfidy much more disruptive. The Romans especially disdained per fidem dēcipere — deception through manipulation or betrayal of trust… faith… fidelity.
Commerce expects — fundamentally depends upon — the readiness of most people, most of the time (i.e., the market) to sufficiently value their own wants and needs that they recognize the benefit of securing supplies and services through exchange of mutually accepted value.
Effective, recurring, profitable commerce requires suppliers and service-providers valuing their own long-term self-interest enough to fulfill their customers expressed needs and respect their customers limitations. Many years ago I considered my own egg-producing operation. After calculating costs, I have always appreciated the ability to buy eggs from others (even at recent price-levels).
Civilization has emerged from non-violent cultivation of such mutual benefit. In 1776 Adam Smith wrote:
He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favor and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind proposes to do this: give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer…
The more uncertain the context, the more commercial good faith and mutual benefit matter. Unpredictable and/or predatory parties increase costs, delay progress, and can ultimately sabotage even otherwise obvious mutual benefits.
Commerce has found longer, more time-consuming, more expensive ways to avoid the Houthis. Commerce has spent most of two centuries and huge sums working to minimize the impacts of floods and droughts on major inland waterways and otherwise transport goods with confidence. The potential for successful perfidy in fossil fuel flows has been reduced by diversifying sources and increasing competition. Energy market mechanisms have evolved to facilitate price fluctuations and mutual benefit. Persistence and patience have generated shared progress.
The United States is the world’s largest economy. US consumption expenditures are more than double any other integrated market. The Congress has delegated to the President of the United States substantial personal authority to set tariffs. President Trump recognizes tariffs as a powerful tool to get what he wants from other nations and generate funds for the US treasury too.
In 2024 the effective US tariff rate was about 2.4 percent. Given what was announced on April 2, we are now looking at about ten-times that level. Tonight reciprocal tariffs will be implemented. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative these tariffs “will range from 0 percent to 99 percent, with unweighted and import-weighted averages of 20 percent and 41 percent.” Today, Peter Navarro, the President’s senior advisor for trade and manufacturing warned, “This is not a negotiation. For the US, it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system. President Trump is always willing to listen. But to those world leaders who, after decades of cheating, are suddenly offering to lower tariffs — know this: that’s just the beginning.”
What President Trump wants is gradually becoming clear. It remains unclear how — even if — trading partners (buyers or sellers) can deliver what the President wants. Mr. Navarro argues the world has been perfidious in trading with the United States. Suddenly and unilaterally prompting a one-fifth (or more) cost increase may well seem an act of bad faith to both buyers in the United States and sellers to those in the United States. Possibilities for mutual benefit are being replaced by mutual suspicion or worse.
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Aeneas and Dido were each tragic exiles. Together they found love. Together they were busy building a great city. But gods conspired to subvert their mutual happiness. Vergil anointed him Aeneas the True, yet Dido accused him of faithless betrayal, treachery, and treason. He left her. She cursed him, throwing herself onto the death pyre’s flames. “Dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum posse nefas, tacitusque mea decedere terra?” (Did you hope to conceal, perfidious one, such a crime and quietly my world depart?) These seeds unfurled into generations of vicious enmity.