Suzanne Harrington: ‘Trump says Laos rice farmers and Cork tech firms are the cheating scavengers'

We foreign cheating scavengers “have torn apart our once beautiful American dream.” In retaliation for such defilement, tariffs have been imposed on islands in the Antarctic inhabited solely by penguins

Suzanne Harrington: "As Trump’s America continues to headbutt the world like a Millwall supporter losing 6-0 at home, we may also reflect — whilst staunching our bloody noses — on the bizarre inversion of what has come to be termed Trump Derangement Syndrome." Picture: Andrew Dunsmore.

If I understood anything about economics, I would be living on an island with a butler and a chef, and not writing this column. But while maths-y ideas like trade deficits and reciprocal tariffs cause my brain to shut down, I do understand words.

I understand that words like “looted, pillaged, and raped” do not apply to the world’s largest economy, as though America were a bonneted maiden being monstered by, I don’t know, some rice farmers from Laos or Pfizer techs from Ringaskiddy in Cork. Yet this is what Donald Trump has said “foreign cheaters” and “foreign scavengers” — we non-Americans — have been doing to America.