Chris Johnson

Judge Boasberg is a rogue judge. He has found himself as the judge of many cases dealing with Trump. For some reason, the magic lottery machine picks his name at “random” when the case involves Trump.

While it is true that you should never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity, this guy is not dumb.

He made it through Yale to be given a Bachelor’s. He then completed a Juris Doctor at Yale, then passed the bar. He was in private practice from 1991 though 1996. In 1996, he became an Assistant US Attorney for D.C. After 6 years, he was made an associate Judge at the Superior Court of DC. This is a “state” level court.

In 2011, Obama appointed him a Judge of the District Court, District of Columbia.

I don’t care what your politics are, you don’t make it to this point without having some level of smarts.

So this is not something that can be explained away by stupidity, leaving malice as the most likely cause.

Boasberg was slapped down by the Supreme Court in April. The Justices said that he did not have Jurisdiction in the case.

He knew this. He knew it when the case came before him. He issued a Preliminary Injunction, called it a TRO, then allowed the administration only a short time to accomplish the impossible.

Having been put in his place by the Supreme Court, he then proceeded to hold the administration in contempt of court for failure to follow his TRO.

It works like this, a party requests a TRO, asking for something, “bring me the head of that troublesome priest.” The judge grants the TRO. Now, the party ordered to do bring the head refuses.

They are now in contempt of court. They appeal, the Appeals court says, “you can’t order them to execute somebody.” The party no longer has to cut the head of that troublesome priest. They are still in contempt of court.

That is the power of a judge.

That is what Boasberg did. He gave a court order. That order was not followed out because it was not possible, nor was it an order he had the constitutional authority to issue. He has the case law to back him, though. He knew the administration would refuse, and therefore he gets to slap them with a contempt charge.

Having found the administration in contempt, the administration appealed to the Circuit Court and requested an administrative stay by the district court.

We are used to seeing this in Second Amendment cases, the district court finds for The People, the judge knows the state will appeal, he issues a 30-day administrative stay of their order to allow the state time to appeal.

This judge denied the motion for an administrative stay.

He ordered the government to assert they have custody of the people in CECOT. This means that the administration can be ordered to present any of them in court. If the administration does not assert custody of the deported Alien Enemies in CECOT, they must provide this rogue judge some other means of ordering them to bring terrorists before him.

The only other option he “granted” was for the administration to offer up a scapegoat to be vilified and punished by this rogue court.

My formal education is as a computer scientist. I was lucky enough to get this education at one of the cusps of computer development.

My Mentor went through a computer science program just 4 years earlier. There were classes he took that were not even offered in my program. The change was in moving from a need to understand hardware to a place where understanding the hardware wasn’t important to computer science.

What this meant was that my Mentor could design a computer from the gate up, I still struggle with hardware design.

My education included understanding low level instructions, instruction timings, bit manipulation, data structures, semaphores, and a host of other low level concepts. It also included much higher concepts.

At the time, my program included a year-long class where we wrote a working compiler, a required class where we wrote an operating system, as well as all the languages of the day. We even had theory class, such as the class on proving a program correct.

In addition to the formal classes offered by the University, I participated in an intense 8-week course where I was taught how to apply the classroom theory to actual working systems. This was the “systems class”. It started at 0800, ran through to 1200 with no breaks. We had a lunch break from 1200 to 1300. Then classes continued from 1300 to 1700.

We had to turn in our assignment of the day at 0800 the next morning.

This is what a day was like on the third week.

Wake up on a table in the student workroom of the computer center. Collect our work, stumble next door to start our 0800 classes. At 1200 hoof it out of there 2 miles to the house, shower, change clothes, move it back to the computer center and get there before 1300.

Being more than 15 minutes late was failure.

Study and learn new topics from the instructors. At 1700, head out to get dinner. Get back to the computer center by 1830. Work on assignments and projects until the computer was shutdown for nightly maintenance at 0400.

Decide if an hour of travel time to sleep in a real bed was worth more than an extra hour of sleep. Claim a table and fall asleep.

Repeat the next day.

Structured Programming

It is hard for a modern programmer to understand what a huge breakthrough the concept of “if-then-else-end if” was. It was the first of our structured code.

Before we had that type of language structure, we used “if condition goto”. Which was even more confusing when you used the FORTRAN IV construct of “IF value goto1, goto2, goto3” where the goto used was based on if the value was negative, zero, or positive. And yes, there was way too much code that used that instruction.

I helped my father with his MBA by being the computer dude to help him with the software he was using. It was written in FORTRAN IV or III. It wasn’t uncommon to be reading a section of code, have a GOTO that took you somewhere else in the code, which then had another goto back to the place where we just were.

In some cases, the code would conditionally jump to that “patch” which would then jump back into the other routine. It was a mess.


if condition then
do something
else if condition then
do something else
else
do something entirely different.
endif


Structured programming has at its base the concept of block correctness. Every block must be well-defined, do one job, have a set of well-defined inputs and outputs.

If this is satisfied, then you can verify the correctness of that block. You can test the set of acceptable and unacceptable inputs and verify that you get the correct outputs. If this test succeeds, then you can mark the block as ‘good’.

You can combine blocks in sequence. If you are connecting blocks, then the preceding blocks must contain all the outputs that will be used by the following blocks.

You can use conditional structures to create a block that is composed of verified working blocks.

Building from Blocks

One of the things about using blocks, is that you can build iteratively.

To give an example, I am working on a website. The front page has a carousel of rotating “hero” images.

From this, I knew I needed to be able to upload an image. The carousel has a fixed aspect ratio, this meant that I needed to have images in this aspect ratio. I also know that the user will want to decide what part of the uploaded image they wanted to use for the hero image.

In simpler terms, this means that I needed the ability to apply simple cropping to an uploaded image.

There is a black box in my head. It has defined the “cropper” block to take as input an image, the current cropping, and the current canvas to draw on. That block will interact with the user. When the user finishes, the block will output (x, y, width, height) in image pixel coordinates.

There is a different block box that takes two HTML elements and uses them to generate the required inputs to the crop block.

Another block takes the output from the crop block and turns it into a post to the server, to update those values.

Here is the thing, I’m using an obsolete cropping package because it is “simpler” while I’m extending my TypeScript and JavaScript knowledge. But I will be able to replace it with a very modern version and none of the other code will break, as long as the inputs and outputs do not change.

Currently, when you save your changes, the code submits the modifications as form data, which causes the page to reload.

Piece Wise Progression

What this means to me is that I’m constantly testing small changes. I will write a block of code, compile, deploy to the test server, test the results, edit some more.

Saturday was a lazy day. I only performed this cycle 50 or so times.

Every time I get a block working better, I make a git commit.

Friday, I had a breakthrough. I managed to make drag and drop work to select a file for uploading. Created a thumbnail of it. This was all via simple HTML and TypeScript.

Progress was fairly slow on this, learning curve, but what I found interesting is that I would get to a point where I had a working image selection, and only then realize that I had not connected the save button to anything.

Once that was working, the edit process turned out to be more difficult than I expected. It was all working from before, but I needed to hook into the code from a different place. But because that edit process had well-defined inputs, it was merely a matter of creating the correct inputs and it all “just worked”.

Of course, once I click that save button, I found out that I wasn’t actually uploading the image. Which was another thing to fix.

That worked, and it turns out that the server side needed some changes.

But everything was working because the process was all about blocks. When a block didn’t do what I wanted, it was a simple process of checking the inputs for correctness, then checking the output for correctness. If input was good and output was bad, it was a logic error. Track it down and everything gets fixed.

Working On The Railroad

When we code, it is not uncommon to find that there is some exception which can’t be processed by “normal means”.

For example, you are expecting an integer, representing the width of something. You get a string instead.

You could go down a new path, or you can convert the string into an integer. I.e. “768” becomes, simply, 768. That’s simple enough.

But what happens if instead of 768 you get “100%”? The answer could be to go down a separate logic path to deal with width, height, x, and y as percentages.

The railroad method says that you treat the code as a railroad line.

There is the mainline, it is a single track running between two cities. If you have a fast train on the tracks, and it is followed by a slow train, that fast train will get held up behind the slow train.

The answer to this is sidings. Much like the passing lanes on a two lane road, a siding is used to shunt one train out of the way while another train passes.

When the fast training is getting near, the slower train is shunted onto a siding. It waits there until the fast train has passed, then continues down the siding and back onto the mainline.

You can write code this way. When there is a problem with the input, you are being shunted onto that siding. You can decide there is no way to continue and abort, throw an error, you can do something else to get yourself back on the mainline.

Using the “100%” example, the siding means that we will do whatever code is required to convert the 100% into an integer that meats the requirements. This could be as simple as looking up the size of the parent and using that size.

The 100% could mean that we want this size to be a match for the other size. I.e., if the natural size of the image is 640×480, 100% width could mean 640. It could also mean that if we scale the height to 75% of natural height, we want to keep the width as 100% of that natural height.

These logical choices are done, and that conversion takes place on the siding. After the conversion is properly completed, the code can join the mainline again and nothing on the mainline needs to change.

This Representative is talking out of both sides of her mouth.

According to her, “they” went into the Delaney Hall premises, guided by the guards.

She claims that she has oversight authority to be there.

Let me see, what happens when you enter a federal property, look around, take pictures and selfies, then walk back out, thanking the cops on duty?

If I remember correctly, you get tossed in jail without bail to wait till a judge decides to hear your case. You are given an option to confess or to be returned to your cell.

The rest of the story is that the Mayor of Newark was arrested. He does not have any “oversight” authority.

The democrat representatives were there for a camera opportunity. Not oversight. I do not know if they even sit on a committee that oversees this facility.

So the good news, is these stunts are getting these showboating politicians arrested.

Ally and I have had some long conversations about winning the hearts and minds of the middle.

The common saying is, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

This is normally true. Sometimes it is not.

In 2016, my parents expressed their disgust for Trump. They were convinced that he was doing horrible things.

Today, there are people that scream and call him a felon. The “fine people” hoax still lives on.

If you are a normal person, you can’t help but be inundated with negative coverage of Trump.

His tariffs will destroy the economy! There is a recession coming! All those empty ships sitting in China means that the US economy is failing and prices are going to go through the roof.

What I see when I see all of those empty container ships is tariffs working. Those are sales China is not making. That is their economy burning to the ground.

But I can’t talk to those in the middle about it. Yes, it is my opinion. My friends that are thinking and on the left, can’t get past the constant barrage of “Evil Trump”!

They just tune out or they get TDS. My ex-friend went that way. It was Trump’s fault that Roe v. Wade was reversed, and that meant there would be no “reproductive care” for women.

It is years since that decision, there are still abortions happening in this country. In some places, more than before the Dobbs decision.

Most of all, I’m reminded of the people telling me that because there are so many accusations of Trump, there is so much smoke coming from the Trump Administration, there must be fire there.

What I saw were arsonists and smoke bombs.

There is a battle of procedure that takes place in our courts. That is getting to a final result.

If the Supreme Court were to rule in favor of Trump in December 2028, it would not matter that he won. We would have lost.

That would be four years of waiting for a final result.

We watched and are watching this play out in the Second Amendment community. Duncan v. Bonta has been around for almost a decade at this point. It has been through the district court twice, the Ninth Circuit court multiple times, and the Supreme Court at least once.

The case has won at the District and Supreme Court, yet the relief sought by the plaintiff is still out of reach. In March 2025, the Ninth Circuit decided to twist the words of the Supreme Court to find that magazines are not arms and are not protected by the Second Amendment.

The State of California doesn’t care how long this case takes or how much money it costs to litigate. The district court enjoined the law back in 2017-2018. The Ninth stayed the injunction. That stay has remained in effect even now as the case has been remanded to the district court, ordering the district court to rule for the state.

As long as the status of the case leans towards the infringers, they are happy to delay.

To show how real this is, a district judge in New York issued a TRO enjoining the SAFE act (Bruen tantrum law). The state had that appealed within hours, even though a TRO is not appealable. The Second Circuit Stayed the injunction.

It took over a year before the Second Circuit finally ruled against The People and The Constitution, sending it back to the District Court for more litigation before the case can start up the chain to the Supreme Court, again.

Because that stay is in place, most of New York state is a gun free zone.

The left is using the same methods to stop the Trump administration. They do not care if they win or if they lose, as long as it doesn’t happen now.

They go court shopping until they find a court willing to issue a universal injunction, stopping the Article II executive branch.

Once the injunction is in place, they start slow walking things.

The Circuit courts are just as rogue in these locations as the District Courts. They are using the interlocutory state to excuse not staying the injunctions. “Just let it play out in court.”

The leftest Justices on the Supreme Court echo those words, “just let it work its way here through the normal process. There is no reason to rush this.”

This go around, the Trump administration has been ready and has been moving hard and fast. Multiple cases have made it to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court has issued opinions favorable to the Trump administration each time.

How are they favorable? In most of the cases, the Justices have ruled to allow the Trump administration to continue as they had intended, while the case works its way through the courts.

This means that the left is on the wrong side of that snail. They are the ones attempting to get the cases through as fast as they can. And it isn’t working for them.

In the few cases where the Justices have not issued a stay, they have chastised the lower courts or scheduled oral hearings quickly.

The case at hand.

A group of people suffering from gender dysphoria have been given medical release from the military. They sued in federal district court, asking for an injunction, which was granted.

This means that the military does not have the power to determine which service members are medical disqualified from serving.

The Supreme Court issued a stay against that injunction for the duration. The stay will remain in effect until the Supreme Court denies cert OR issues a final opinion.

We are winning, the courts are moving at breakneck speed, and it keeps looking good.

The other thing which is happening, is that the lanuguage of the Court is changing, they are getting less and less polite and more and more pointed in their correcting of the inferior courts.

There are so many versions of this song. The ending changes sometimes.

When dealing with people of the left, a failed program with horrible outcomes is almost always excused with, “it was done with good intentions.”

Obamacare was intended to give health care to every one. Instead, it cost people their insurance, their doctors, and made everything more expensive. But the intentions were good, so just forgive and forget the bad outcomes.

“Do I believe that this language is meant to harm or confuse students?” is not relevant. “Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by stupidity”. That is where I lived for many, many, many years. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three time is enemy fire.

“More inclusive?” No, it is designed to allow people, teachers, administrators, parents, and students to get participation awards for failing.

I took my oldest daughter to the range, back when I didn’t know enough, and tried to teach her how to shoot. She did a miserable job. In the end, she managed to get all 8 rounds from the 1911 on paper. Not even in the target, just on paper.

I was so proud of her improvement, I praised her, “That’s perfect, brat!”.

She came home, excited about range day. She showed her final target to the rest of the family, telling everybody she had done perfectly.

Today, If there is more than a MOA in my pattern, I have to do better. No, I don’t get MOA most of the time. There is lots of room for improvement.

Telling somebody they are a “learner”, when they are not, is malicious. It might not be meant in a malicious way, that doesn’t mean it isn’t.

A learner is somebody with a learning mind set. Someone who is open to learning something new, or improving on something they already know. I’ve known many learners over the years.

Some people are not natural learners. They will “turn off their brains” after a hard day at the office. They do mindless things. They only have enough energy to learn when it is required.

I know people who have 4.0 grade point averages that were not learners. They were great students, they learned while in class, but they might not ever apply that to anything in the future.

I want to highlight the entire quote, but there are three sections.

“Done with positive intentions.” I do not know that it was done with positive intentions. Nobody has presented any evidence to me that it was done with positive intentions. The intentions are not relevant.

I believe the most of the people who are currently using the term haven’t really thought about it. Instead, they fall into the patterns of their bosses. They are slowly herded into standard group think.

Most of these people never thought about the misuse of the word “learner”, they didn’t think at all. They were sheep.

The second part is the definition. Yes, that is a reasonable definition of a learner.

“It reflects a belief…” is not part of the definition. It is wishful thinking. Not every person can grow, discover and take ownership of their learning.

This type of thinking is certainly reflective of left think. If we label something, then that something will become the label.

This is a pile of dung. Calling it pizza will not make it pizza. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” — Act II, Scene II, Romeo and Juliet

We don’t call somebody a “winner” because of their potential to win. We call them a winner when they do win.

We don’t give out Medal of Honor to soldiers because of their potential to earn the medial, but because they did earn it.

… I still believe all students can become learners… Exactly! A student can become a learner. And when they do, they are learners. Until that, they can still be students.

I am a computer scientist by education. I’m good at it. I was hanging with my friends, all of them scientists as well. We were working on a difficult problem, making slow headway on it. One of them spoke up, “Come on, it’s not that hard. It isn’t rocket science.”

Everybody got very silent and stared at her. She worked for NASA. The problem we were working was rocket science.

We all laughed, and I remember it to this day.

When I have to deal with somebody with an associates degree in information technology claiming the mantel of “Scientist”, I become irritated.

The sales jerk that expressed his opinion, incorrectly quoting MSM telling me I couldn’t have an opinion because I wasn’t a “Scientist”, made me walk to the other end of the building to confront him in person. The words I had to say weren’t for the rest of the team to hear.

We need to stop giving out participation awards

I remember coming up on a tee-ball game.

“What’s the score?”

Player’s dad: “We don’t keep score, everyone is a winner.”

Player: 4 to 1, they won’t use the scoreboard, so we have to keep track ourselves.

…or to become curious, independent learners?

Personally, I want them to become curious, independent learners, with a lifelong learning mindset. To that end I will reward them with the well-earned title of “learner” when it happens. Until then, they are, at best, students.

This weekend is opening weekend at the Fort at No 4. This is the first time The Fort has been open to the general public this year.

I believe this is the first opening weekend I’ve attended. It was fun, it was outstanding, it was hard work.

The first time I arrived, it felt like I was arriving at “House of Cash” from “Hurt”. “Closed to the Public”.

It felt like it was in disrepair, dying from neglect and lack of public love.

That’s not what it feels like today.

Ally had to stay home, she has been under the weather and is recovering. She has a hard deadline of two weeks to have her dress ready. Something special is happening for her.

My lady and I went up instead. When we pulled into the parking lot, the lot was more than half filled. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it that full before, outside major events.

We had two of our blacksmiths working the forge. Richard Write and Sam. Richard has forgotten more about smithing than I expect to ever know. Sam is an expert in blade smithing. We discussed how to make a reproduction tool that would be period.

It is a bit of work, but I can make it happen.

We had visitors arrive. I learned that 4th and 5th graders have a sorry grasp on the history of this countries founding.

Still, it was good.

From there I headed over to the workshop, I had given two of my mallets to the Fort for use in the workshop.

Having had the winter to do research, I got to work with wood planes. It was adjusted perfectly. Watching the rough-cut lumber turning into finished product was a type of zen. The sound of a well tuned plane is something I don’t get in my modern shop.

I didn’t need to plane this wood down. It would have been fine like it was, I wanted to learn.

The Fort likes to have programs. These are times when an interpreter does something that visitors can watch, or sometimes, participate in.

Normally, I do plaining at the back side of the big table, this time I moved to the front and setup there, so people could see what was happening. Sure enough, there were soon visitors there.

My favorite type of visitor is a family with 3rd to 8th graders. Children that are still interested in the world and what came before, but not grumping about being off their phones.

We had at least two families like that.

The twins came in and were interested in the augers. They got to touch and teach me how it worked, then we looked around the shop to locate examples of holes with pegs. Mostly we found holes for legs and several chairs that holes in them for runners and whatever the back spindles are called.

They picked a plain, they got to see how it would work, then the boy got to use the plain. In other words, he was working to smooth the piece of lumber I needed to be smoothed. If we trick them into doing the work, is it really child labor?

Molding plains, shave horses, draw knives, yarn counter and others. They were bouncing and happy when the left. I’m hoping they will remember this day long into the future.

That’s it. I’m tired and sore. But it is good.

For those of you that are within the distance, I am really looking forward to seeing you at The Fort.

Before I got to high school, the term was “illegal alien”. This was the technically, legally correct term.

According to the INA, The term “alien” means any person not a citizen or national of the United States — 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(3)

The term “illegal alien” is not used, but no term is defined within the INA for illegal aliens.

Now the term “illegal alien” was used to create faux outrage, “Nobody is Illegal!” was the scream.

They then became “aliens”, then “undocumented migrants”, and then “undocumented works” and finally, “migrants”.

All of these language changes were done with purpose and evil in the hearts of the manipulators.

Who wants an “illegal alien” living with them? How worries about an undocumented migrant living with them. One sounds much more “criminal” than the other.

This worked so well, that today, and every day, I hear leftists scream about “she was just a Maryland mother, she had committed no crimes.”

She committed the crime of entering this country illegally. That is a crime.

In the Second Amendment community, we’ve seen the infringers pivot to “assault weapons” to “gun safety” to “prevent gun violence”. The words are designed to hide the actual intentions.

The Education Industry

There is a community that I’ve labeled the Education Industry. This includes teacher’s unions, school boards, school administrators, the Department of Education at all levels, and the vendors selling into these groups.

One of the worst things about the EI, is that it isn’t interested in good results, it is interested in looking like they are providing good results.

I’ve had many people within the EI tell me that it is impossible to use objective standards to “grade” teachers. Then proceeded to prove it by informing me that judging teachers by how well their students do, doesn’t work.

These same people have then told me which teachers in the school are good or bad. They know what makes a good teacher, they know what makes a bad teacher. They are not willing to turn those into written, objective, criteria.

When my children were younger, there was an incident in the classroom. I was brought in to hear about how my son had misbehaved.

“Your son hit one of his friends.”

“He hit Jimmy? I’ll have to speak with Jimmy’s parents to find out what happened and make sure they can patch it up.”

“No, it wasn’t Jimmy.”

Turns out that the “friend” that he hit was the classroom bully and had no friends.

She was my son’s “friend” because everybody in the room was a “friend.”

The research strongly suggested that students with good social interactions and with a strong support base of friends performed better.

This meant that schools that wanted to have students perform well, they needed friends.

Since you can’t force people to be friends, they just redefined all classmates as “friends”. Instant solution. Everybody has friends now. They will all do better.

Nope, of course not. This is just industrial-sized cheating.

Nothing more than the marathon runner who trotted off the starting line, ran a mile, got on the subway and then to the ending line.

They waited “long enough” then rejoined the other runners for the last mile, mile and a half.

They caught her because her time put her in world-class times.

She wasn’t “cheating” in her mind, she “didn’t want to disappoint her daughter.” So she cheated.

The EI cheats all the time.

“No Child Left Behind”. The EI turned to malicious compliance and malicious misunderstandings to create a disaster.

If you read the bill, if you read the statements made around it, you quickly realize that the goal was to make sure that no child was shorted the opportunity to succeed.

If you were a little slow, more resources would be provided, to help you reach classroom standards. It was also supposed to help the gifted children, making sure they also received extra resources.

Instead, it became BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome). No child left behind meant that schools couldn’t hold students back.

Their Learners

One of the latest pushes was “the learning mindset” where the EI would create “lifetime learners”.

I’m a learner, I’m always attempting to learn something new. I don’t always succeed, but I darn well try. If you’ve been following this blog, you’ve read about the things I attempt to learn.

People that have a learning mindset naturally do better at learning things.

We want learners in our schools. We want to encourage learners.

Knowing how important having a lifetime learning mindset is, the schools have ditched the term “student” and replaced it with “learner”.

Now everybody is a learner. It says so right on the label.

My teacher explained to me that calling them “learners” was encouraging them to have that learning mindset.

I reached over and picked up something on the table. “This is the medal of honor. It is awarded to those that do amazing, heroic acts, putting the lives of others before their own. I’m giving this to you to encourage you to do amazing, heroic acts, putting the lives of others before your own.”

I was lucky, she got it and I didn’t get slapped.

You can call it day when it’s night, you can call it good when it’s bad, that doesn’t make it so.

Update

The world is ending because the United States is imposing tariffs on other countries. This will cause the economy to crash.

Amazon was going to put up a “this product cost you $x in tariffs” to drive home just how evil tariffs are.

That is not what happens.

Let’s consider a tool I purchased recently. It cost me $45, it was made in China.

According to Amazon, since there is a 145% tariff on China, that means that $18.37 of that price is me paying a tariff.

This is garbage. Not true. There is no way to know what I am paying in tariffs because that is decided by the vendor.

To understand tariffs, we need to understand the difference between cost and price.

Let’s assume I’m buying lots of widgets from a vendor in Canada. According to the US government, there is a 145% tariff on those goods coming into the US.

Using the Amazon system, if we would see this particular item on Amazon for around $0.99 with $0.59 of that being “tariffs”.

This particular widget cost $0.58 cents. This is the amount the Chinese seller gets per unit. It costs $0.01 to get it shipped over to Canada.

This puts the total cost to the vendor at $0.59. This includes any tariffs imposed by Canada or export costs imposed by China.

The customer is buying these widgets from the vendor for $0.80/unit.

Using the Amazon model, this would mean that the tariffs would be $0.47/unit. If this were the case, the vendor would make negative $0.12 per unit. This is not viable. Something else must be happening.

There is something else happening. That is, that the vendor first sells the widget at cost to himself in the United States.

This means that he is paying a tariff on his cost of the item. Which is $0.58 with a tariff of $0.85. This makes the breakeven point on this product $1.44

The vendor and the customer have negotiated how much each will pay of the tariff. They agree to split the tariff 50/50.

This means that the breakeven point is now $1.02, meaning that the vendor loses $0.22/unit. The cost to the customer is now $0.80 + $0.43 = $1.23.

The customer will lose $0.24 per unit sold on Amazon instead of the $0.19 he was making before the tariffs.

The reality is that this widget is listed on Amazon. The price is $2.83/unit.

The Canadian vendor is not going to eat any of the tariff costs, that will be passed on to the customer.

The customer’s cost will go from $0.80 to $1.66.

Your price will go from $2.83 to what?

It will likely stay at $2.83. Why?

Because if they could sell the product at $3.83 they would already be selling it at $3.83. It is that simple.

Will it go up a little? Maybe. What if it went up enough to cover the entire cost of the tariffs? That would take it to $3.69/unit. That is still a much smaller percentage than what Amazon and the media would have you believe.

Which brings us to reality, once again. The price of this item will probably go to $3.33 per unit. A cost increase of $0.50/unit.

This is the complexity of tariffs, much of the pricing calculations are done well outside the view of the final user.

At every stage, the price of the good is set at the maximum that the market will tolerate. If that means that profits go down, profits will go down. If profits go down too much, then that seller will go out of business.