The Pour Over Today - BONUS: TPO Explains Tariffs | 10.18.25

Episode Date: October 18, 2025

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 20 minutes… This week, they’re explaining tariffs. Join over 1.5 million readers with our free newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠⁠Cru⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Surfshark⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Holy Post⁠⁠ ⁠⁠CCCU⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Upside⁠⁠ ⁠⁠HelloFresh⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Mosh⁠⁠ ⁠⁠LMNT⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Theology in the Raw⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Safe House Project⁠⁠ ⁠⁠A Place For You⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Practicing Life Together⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Quince⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Courage for Life Study Bible⁠⁠ ⁠⁠She Reads Truth

Today's episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Safe House Project. I just have to take my watch off my ankle. Why is this the watch on your ankle? Yeah, okay, so my first day on the walking pad, I did like three miles, and I went to this website, and I was like, I'm 5'3, and I just did three miles, how many steps should I have? And it said, like, 9,000 steps, and my watch said, you have 9 steps. I was so upset. And then I went to workout class. that night.

You needed Google to confirm that the nine steps your watch said was wrong. Okay, no, but what I was going to do was manually add them. Like, okay, clearly it didn't count, but let me just manually add them. I'm in this October challenge, and apparently you can't manually add steps because I don't want you to cheat, but whatever. So I went to workout class that night, and this girl was like, you have to put your watch on your ankle. Because if you're like working, your wrist isn't moving, whatever. And so now it just looks like I am on house arrest all the time. He's like, watch what I?

Nice. Hello and welcome to another episode of TPO Explains. I'm Joe, podcast producer here at The Pourover, and I'm here with Jason, our founder and editor-in-chief, and Kathleen, our managing editor. So here's the idea behind the show. Our readers share which topics they want us to explore, and we bring that to the podcast. Today's winner, Tariffs.

I thought this was old news, guys. It's back. It's back, and, you know, the readers want to know, so we're here. All right, Joe, we'll just, hey, it's old news, you should know. What is a tariff? all right i went to the farmers market recently and so i was thinking of some anecdote that i could try and make this relatable so i was thinking all right i'm going to start a lemonade stand at the farmer's market and obviously i need lemons for my lemonade stand so i have my wholesaler supplier

jason is my wholesale dude who provides the lemons so jason gets these lemons from mexico and let's just say the Trump administration slaps a 10% tariff on Mexico for these lemons. So my, I don't know if this is right now because I have not done any research on this, but I imagine my wholesaler Jason would need to account for this 10% tariff because his supplier in Mexico is getting hit with this from the United States of, hey, if you want to sell your lemons here, you've got to give us 10% to the government. So then I'm imagining Jason's going to slap me with a 10% tariff, and I'm going to need to consider what that's going to do with my cost at the farmer's market.

Close. Are you fine in the lemonade stand example? No, no, no. And next year you'll be six. That's right. It's a surplus. Okay, so very close. If you're buying lemons from me and I'm buying lemons from Mexico and there's now a 10% tariff on lemons from Mexico, then I need to pay, let's say a lemon is $1.

I pay my supplier in Mexico a dollar. I then pay 10 cents to the U.S. government. So the supplier in Mexico is not paying the U.S. government or making any more money. They're not making any more money. The Mexican government isn't paying the U.S. government, any of that. It is me as the importer that is paying my local government, the U.S. government, that money. And then I can decide what I do with it. Maybe I just eat that, you know, price hike and I continue to sell you lemons for whatever it is. But you can imagine, you're right, they're frequently passed on. And you can imagine if it's like, hey, if it's a 5% tariff or something, maybe I absorb that.

It's not worth the hassle. If it's a 100% tariff, it's like, listen, I can't. Someone's got to pay. I'm not selling Joe Lemons for a loss. So the price is going to go up. And so the magnitude of the of the tariff has a big impact. Yeah. But simply a tariff is a tax on imported good.

Yeah. Great job. Great job, Joe. Do you know? We'll come to your eliminated. That's right. As long as you, you know, needs to be reasonably charged you more, though. Yeah, because of tariffs. Yeah. What are, so you, you explained one type of tariff, which is an Advilorum tariff, which is percentage based. There is another, there are two sort of other types of tariffs. Any idea what those are? Is it just an actual flat fee, not a percentage, but for this import tax, it's going to be $100 every time? Yeah, just a fixed fee. So this would often be used on commodities where, like, the price is constantly changing. Think of, like, barrels of oil.

No matter what the price of oil is that day, there's going to be, for example, a $10 tariff on that barrel. Yeah. And then the last type is compound tariff. So you have the Advilorum, which is percentage, specific, which is that fixed fee, and then compound, and a compound tariff is just a mix of the two. You know, it's going to be a flat $10 plus 5% of whatever it is. Great. Joe, why do countries use tariffs? Why would the U.S. government impose a tariff?

I feel like when it's in the news with the United States and the Trump administration, there's negotiation involved. of like, hey, we feel like you've been taking advantage of the United States and we want to impose this tax on imported goods from you because we feel like we've been pretty much taken advantage of. So there could be some geopolitical relations of making things feel more fair in a sense would be one reason. Yeah, there's really three main reasons why governments would use tariffs.

So it used to be more of a revenue generation stream for countries. Actually, before income taxes were a thing, tariffs generated like half of the U.S. revenue. So before 1913, tariffs accounted for half of U.S. revenue. The second way they could be used is to protect domestic industries. So if suddenly it costs a lot to get lemons from Mexico, then maybe the U.S. lemon industry will be a boom in. And then the third way would be foreign policy, so to pressure other countries. And again, because the tax is not from that other country, it's not a way of saying, hey, China, you have to pay us more. It's really just pressuring, it's pressuring them to change their ways because their stuff

won't be bought potentially because it'll be too high or cost too much. So really when we hear about tariffs and the headlines these days, it's mostly foreign policy with a little bit of protecting domestic industries and maybe a little bit of revenue generation sprinkled in. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible, so it can be tough to know where to begin a deeper study. That's why the Courage for Life study Bible includes a whopping 1,464 studies, one on each page of Bible text, so you can dive in anywhere. Each study highlights courage and action and walks you through a discipleship pathway designed to help you overcome obstacles and embrace a life of transformation rooted in God's Word. And if you want to go even deeper, the free filament Bible app unlocks over

25,000 additional notes, hundreds of videos, maps, devotionals, and a full audio Bible. Grab your Courage for Life Study Bible for personal study, couples devotions, or small groups at Courage for Life Bibles.com, or check out the link in the show notes. Okay, so with that idea, Kathleen, with those three reasons, it begs the question. I'm curious, do tariffs actually end up helping or hurting our economy? Kathleen? Depends on who you asked. I think he was asking me.

No, I think he said Kathleen. So are tariffs good? Are they helping? I am not an economist, so I don't know. meta answer for you but just like most things there's going to be like proponents of it and critics of it most lately you can see like there is revenue being generated from these tariffs the ones that we're experiencing currently um so some people could look at that and be like oh it's a great thing but at the end of the day the people who are most critical of tariffs um they're going to cite

reasons like just by design tariffs make the market less efficient a free market is you know on paper always going to be more efficient and tariffs are going to make prices higher for consumers. And then critics will also point to the way tariffs will disproportionately affect lower income consumers. So if somebody only has $5 and they need to spend a dollar on lemons and the lemon prices going up, like more of their income is going to have to go to covering net tariff versus if somebody has $100, they're like, I'll pay the extra $10. 10% on the limit. It's no big deal. And that's actually the reason why income tax came about was to scale out how much people paid to the U.S. government based on their income. So yeah,

I don't know if, Jason, you have a better answer on if it helps or hurts, but all I know is that there's two sides of the argument. Yeah. No, I think, so like you said, in 1913 moved away because of it, a tariff is a, it's a consumption tax. Like you only pay it if you spend the money. And so if when there's lots of consumption taxes, or that's the primary way, it incentivizes you to not spend money and to save it, well, that benefits wealthier individuals who are able to save more money or a higher percentage of their paycheck. Whether or not they're good. So I'll give one example, you gave some criticisms. I'll give one example where I would advocate for tariffs, and that's protecting specific industries in, like, we'll take the United States. So, for example,

during COVID, we realized, the U.S. realized, wow, we are really dependent on buying things from other countries, specifically China. And so when China shuts down for any reason, that really impacts tons of, tons of things. And so to say, hey, as a, and so even before these recent tariffs. The Biden administration put tariffs on, I believe was semiconductors and some other things that they're saying, hey, this is like critical to national security. We need to be able to make semiconductors in the United States. Same thing. Like, we need to be able to make bullets and rockets and weapons to defend the nation. We don't want to have to, you know, import those from a country because what if that's the country we end up going to war with?

So I think pushing on the scales in those instances to say there's a specific goal that we like feel some deep conviction about and is in the best interest of the country. I think that makes a lot of sense. I am an entrepreneur and am pro free market and would say in generally in general like you're just tipping the scales, you're making things less efficient and more expensive overall. And so just as a general posture, I would say, I don't think tariffs are good broadly, but they're a tool in a country's tool belt. I do have a question. Kathleen, you mentioned one of the supporting arguments is that it brings in all this revenue. So we're months down the road from where

when these tariffs started taking place. So are we seeing a surplus and has the administration decided, if so, what this surplus would be spent on? I think Kathleen's Googling the number. Yes. Yeah. There's been a lot of revenue for the U.S. government. And there was originally some talk of maybe like sending checks to citizens. But I think the most recent headline I saw was that it was going to be used to pay down debt.

um national debt but it is i mean yeah it there's there's real money on the table billions of dollars i don't know kathleen if you're able to find a a more specific number okay so i'm looking at bipartisan policy dot org which hopefully is a trusted isish i don't know neutralish source um and it says thus far in 2025 there has been 194 billion dollars in revenue from gross tariffs that um that sounds right it feels like no no that that feels like it's probably around the right number so for like context in 2022 it was that's the next highest year of here of revenue and it was 90 billion so a hundred billion dollars more in revenue and the year's not over so a lot more well it's it's come it's comparative like or comparable it goes through the

199th day of the year, which I guess today is. Happy 199th day of the year, guys. Don't fact check that. And same to you. Oh, as of October 14th, great. It must be at least be the 1001st day. Now we missed 200. Joe, how do you feel about tariffs?

Do you feel like you get it? I feel like I get it. I think the big hinge point, obviously in my analogy that I missed, was that it ends up landing on the supplier the supplier the supplier is the one if you're importing that good and there's a tariff on it you are the one responsible for paying that tariff um on it so that was helpful in understanding the mechanism behind it yeah uh Kathleen it was a big hit last time we can let you loose yeah I don't for you yeah so grave reviews from you to give you time to do some fun facts i we need to get like a a little hourglass like 90 seconds but uh go what what's something fun

okay all right fun fact about tariffs they're okay have you heard of the chicken tax anybody raise your hand that's what i thought uh sorry i'll get me more time no no okay um so the chicken tax was a 25% tariff and on imported light trucks so like like like not like light trucks like after a power goes out, but like, well, trucks, like. Not heavy trucks. Um, yeah, that. Okay, so this tariff originated in 1964 and it was after European nations had put a tariff on American poultry because they wanted their own chickens to be more popular.

So then the U.S. was like, well, we don't like that. We're going to do our own tariff. So it was in 25% tax. Um, but why was it on on trucks? It's because Germany was involved and Volkswagen was involved and they had the like light truck that we were importing anyway. So it's actually credited with protecting the U.S. auto industry because it's still in place allowing U.S. made trucks to dominate the auto market.

So the U.S. auto industry, actually, the union was involved. Like because of this, the union became a bigger part of the auto industry. It's just interesting to me that like a chicken tax has led to a stronger U.S. truck market. So some foreign country imposed attacks on U.S. chickens, and then we retaliated by taxing not heavy trucks. And it's still around. And it's why everyone has a F-150. Pretty much. It's like part of an original, an executive order from 1964 and parts of that have been lifted, but the one on truck specifically has remained.

and that's one of the longest standing tariffs. Okay, so that sparks something. Another criticism of tariffs is exactly this, that they just stay in place forever. That, well, one, they spark retaliation. And so it's not like you say, hey, prices are going to go up this much and we're willing to kind of weather that storm. What's like, well, they then retaliate and it gets out of hand. And then also it becomes very hard to repeal politically to repeal these things because right now I'm presuming if we went to remove this tariff on light trucks from Germany, Ford would feel some sort of way about it, even though the original reason for it has gone. So another criticism of tariffs, but also who knows the revenue generation and all the good things that came from.

Is Kathleen still on the clock, or was that your one fun fact? I think I'm out of iron. I burned it. You're welcome. Human trafficking isn't just an over-their problem. It's happening right here in the U.S. An estimated 300,000 people are being trafficked in America right now, and most were first sold as children.

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the link in the show notes to give now. Well, with that, let's move on to the Christian perspective. What do you guys have for me today? I'm thinking through tariffs and just like how I see them in the headlines and really it just kind of makes me feel like I'm not in control of as much as I think I am on a given day. And so the eternal perspective is just that if things are out of our control, the economic negotiations, whatever, we can still reflect our faith in Christ and encourage others. So in the face of uncertainty and change, we want to seek to reflect the peace of God. It surpasses all understanding.

Yeah, I think my mind also went to an eternal perspective. And this is just feels like such a classic thing of like, man, it impacts people and it can be frustrating. We have opinions. But when I think about what I will care about and wanted, wish I would have cared more about in 10,000 years when I'm in heaven, it's not, you know, it's not chicken taxes. and saying, hey, if you're in a position to be able to change the chicken tax or set the chicken tax, then I think this is something you should think a lot about and advocate for. But for me, who has very limited control over this, I think understanding how it impacts me and moving on and not letting it stir up anger and strife. Love it. And I won't raise the prices of my lemonade to you guys in heaven at my lemonade stand.

Thanks. I told you guys that Emma started calling heaven Kevin and I haven't corrected her. And nobody better tell her that's different. She was like, oh, and when people are old, they go to Kevin. And I was like, yeah, they go to Kevin. So Kevin's lemonade stand. That's right. One of the joys of parenting.

Nobody tell her. Well, thanks everyone for joining us for another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time. Bye.

Life with Christ was never meant to be a solo project. Practicing life together shows how ordinary, habits, like communal prayer, shared meals, studying God's word, and keeping Sabbath, can root us in Christ and each other. Embrace rhythms that form genuine, lasting community. Check out Practicing Life Together by Paul Guttecker at the link in the show notes.