John Oliver Mocks Trump’s Global Trade War and His “Plan to Shoot the Economy in the Dick”

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John Oliver playfully ridiculed yet again President Donald Trump during the initial part of Last Week Tonight on Sunday, particularly taking aim at his proposal to impose at least a 10% tax on goods coming from any nation trading with the United States.

Oliver played a short video where Trump stated, “We’re on the brink of an exceptional era for America. It’s going to make a comeback.

If by “golden age” you’re referring to a period reminiscent of the final decade before someone reaches the end of their life, I can certainly agree that it seems as though we are currently experiencing something akin to the “Golden Age” of America. Thank you for bringing this up.

Later in the show, the HBO host displayed footage of Trump using a compact chart as a prop. This very same visual aid was humorously ridiculed during NBC’s Saturday Night Live broadcast recently. Trump himself commented on the size of the chart, mentioning that he had a larger one prepared but the windy conditions made it difficult to use and it wasn’t likely to stand upright.

Reflecting on this, it seems quite strategic, implying they’ve considered every potential issue when unveiling their plan to impact the economy significantly. However, I should note that if wind was a concern in that context, the White House actually has an ‘interior space’ for protection.

Oliver pointed out that the graph had received some negative feedback, particularly concerning the methods used by the administration to gather some of its information.

He remarked, “Regrettably, that graph is nonsensical for several reasons.” One major issue, he pointed out, was that it presented tariff estimates for the USA by other countries in a way that left people baffled until a financial journalist discovered it simply represented the difference between exports and imports, divided by imports. This method, he explained, was mind-boggling because exports and imports have no connection to tariffs. It’s like trying to determine the size of your home by dividing your phone number by your dog’s age, or measuring your temperature based on your head’s distance from the sun. Needless to say, it won’t provide you with the answer you’re seeking.

Later, it was mentioned that the White House shared an “apparently complex mathematical formula,” but people soon discovered that one symbol represented exports, another stood for imports, and the remaining figures were constants fixed at 4 and 1/4. This revelation showed that these elements cancelled each other out, implying that the equation remained the same simple one that everyone had criticized from the start.

However, Oliver pointed out that the proposed tariff plan becomes increasingly questionable, given that it targets locations such as the Heard and McDonald Islands. These are distant islands close to Antarctica, inhabited only by a thriving penguin colony, not by any people.

Oliver exclaimed, “Wow! If I told my past self in 2015 that President Trump would engage in a trade war with an isolated penguin island, they’d surely ask, ‘What on earth are you referring to?’

Simultaneously, following Trump’s announcement of tariffs, the stock market plummeted. Trump then played an audio recording from a Restoration Hardware earnings call, where chairman and CEO Gary Friedman was discovering in real-time how his own company’s stock value was falling.

Friedman asked during the call, ‘What’s the current status of our shares?’ He seemed to imply that the stock had decreased due to the figures we presented earlier, and it further plummeted for some other reasons. It looks like he was quite surprised by something, exclaiming ‘Oh really? Oh shit.’ followed by a quick recovery with ‘OK.’

Oliver humorously stated, “Indeed, that description fits quite aptly. Frankly, I can’t think of a more accurate summary of experiencing the Trump presidency than the phrase ‘Oh really? Oh dear. Alright.’

During the program, Oliver playfully made a jest about HBO being the “family ties network,” alluding to one of the most prominent plotlines on The White Lotus, as well as story arcs in two other HBO series, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, which share similar themes.

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2025-04-07 07:24