TikTok, AI, War, and Tariffs The Ads Will Follow You 'Till The Bitter End

TikTok might stick around for years, but it’ll be kept on a leash, a few months at a time, just like the sweeping tariffs that may never fully happen

TikTok could have gone away again, but it will be temporarily saved for the second time by an executive order from President Donald Trump. The app has dealt with the manic waves of politics over the last few years since Trump first set into motion its ban or forced divestment back in 2020. We are all tied up in a similar politically driven spiral of uncertainty.

Friends, the politics—and dare I say mania—surrounding TikTok are the same forces destabilizing the stock market, the job market, entire industries, and, for many, even the place they call home. These changes are being driven by unpredictable humans and unreliable computers—neither of which seem capable of empathy. Tariffs have sent the stock market into a free fall, just like every economist but Peter Navarro, Trump’s hand selected dipshit, said they would.

“But I don’t own stocks,” I hear you saying. The stock market isn't my favorite barometer for the United States' economic health; however, when it drops precipitously due to political choices, the "stonks" become like tea leaves. Even if you are broke, the US offers the relative economic stability that the $2 hot dog on a roller in a bodega probably will not shoot up to $4 tomorrow.

Reading The Tea Leaves

According to MarketWatch, the market suffered its largest two-day drop in history between April 3rd and 4th of 2025. Additionally, Dow Jones Market Data indicates that approximately $11.1 trillion has been erased from the US stock market from January 17th, day before President Trump began his second term and April 4th. The market is not the people, but if your income depends on people buying or selling things a $6.6 trillion two-day drop is going to impact you.

A fall like this serves as an omen—a heavy-handed one at that, something akin to a black cat crossing your path, stopping directly in front of you, and saying in a thick British accent, "You poor bastard, heaven has no place for you, and hell is just the earth."

We can never know exactly what would have happened, but without the sweeping tariffs Trump threatened and later implemented, the drop would likely have been less catastrophic. In fact, it’s fair to say the tariffs were the primary cause of the decline. It’s harder to argue against a causal link when Trump paused most tariffs for 90 days and the market immediately began a partial rebound. To be clear, the market didn’t recover to pre-Trump levels—but the free fall did start to reverse.

Tariffs: An Act of Trade War With Other Nations, a Regular Old War Against Citizens

Tariffs have long been considered problematic by economists In 1886, economist Henry George argued in his book, "Protection or Free Trade," that tariffs are a nation doing to itself in times of peace what they do to enemies in times of war. The actions of Trump, at this scale, are in effect a wartime move directed at the citizens of the United States.

Civilized nations, however, do not use their armies and fleets to open one another's ports to trade. What they use their armies and fleets for, is, when they quarrel, to close one another's ports. And their effort then is to prevent the carrying in of things even more than the bringing out of things—importing rather than exporting. For a people can be more quickly injured by preventing them from getting things than by preventing them from sending things away. Trade does not require force. Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

George, Henry. Protection or Free Trade. New York: Henry George & Co., 1886.

Some may point to the McKinley Tariff Act of 1890—when average import duties hit nearly 50%—and claim the U.S. still experienced economic prosperity. Others might note that the low-tariff era under President Bill Clinton came right before the Great Recession. But here’s the thing: President William McKinley took an economy poised to flourish and made it worse. And Clinton? He set a bunch of finance bros up with the expectation that no rules would ever apply to them. They needed rules, Billy boy.

Did AI Write These War Plans?

Trump’s tariff policy may have been created by AI. The Verge quoted Economist James Surowiecki who found the formula for these tariffs closely resembles the suggestions provided by multiple major AI chatbots (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok) when asked for a simple way to balance trade deficits with tariffs. These chatbots consistently suggested a method of dividing a country's trade deficit with the US by their total exports to the US, and then often halving that result.

The Trump administration's new, currently paused, tariffs have other oddities, like tariffs on Heard and McDonald Islands’. Places that according to the BBC, humans have not visited in almost a decade. Folks, I’ve created many reports in my day, and I cannot imagine a human analyst creating tariffs for islands of penguins; for AI, however that seems par for the course.

When I use LLMs, the type of AI ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Grok fall under to research something I know nothing about it seems like magic. When I use AI to research a topic I know well, an LLM seems like the village idiot. I view this as a strong data point that AI is about 50% bullshit across the board.

Yes, I’m aware the tariff policy being pushed out by AI is identical to what’s outlined in Peter Navarro’s books. The problem? Navarro cites apparently fictitious experts, so his work isn’t exactly a solid source. At this point, it seems like one of two things happened: either Navarro used AI to write his books, or AI was trained on his books. Either way, it’s absurd.

AI Is Like A Talking Dog

If you met a dog who could talk, you’d be amazed. It’s a talking fucking dog! Now suppose that the dog, who is amazing in that it speaks, was also a huge dumbass? You wouldn't ask the dog to write trade policy, would you?

AI is cool. I used an LLM to fix typos, and grammar mistakes in this article. I didn’t know how to write the citation for a quote, so I asked Gemini. For another project I have a GPT model trained with hundreds of old texts, and I use the AI to find half remembered quotes. AI, when used narrowly can make human performance slightly better. The problem is the people who use AI the most seem to do so out of laziness, or disrespect for human creativity.

For much of my life, I’ve been an ad man—a career that’s highly vulnerable to market disruption. When the market crashes, like it did in 2020 and again now in 2025, it’s bad news for the advertising industry. We live in an ad-supported world now, so sorry to say, you’ll be seeing ads until the total collapse of society. But for ad men like myself, bad markets mean one thing: AI-generated slop, placed by AI on an internet increasingly filled with more AI slop, becomes cheaper—and therefore preferable—to human creative work.

Slop Is Relative

AI may be a blithering moron that should not be replacing humans for much, but what should and what is, are not the same thing. AI has clearly gained adoption at a rate that exceeds technical advancement. This will sound pretentious, but as the use of AI has expanded past the early adopters the way it is used is getting less sophisticated.

I see an exponential curve for the expansion of slop. One caused, bluntly, by the prompts to the AI changing from “write an excel macro so I can craft this trade policy,” to simply “write this trade policy.” When the trade policy is using AI, the bar for quality has dropped.

Looking back at marketing, I’ve found that for most companies I’ve worked with—whether big brands or solo-operator startups—the game is simply to keep up with the competition. Real innovation is seen as a risk. I remember trying to convince brands to use YouTube in 2011, or Facebook ads in 2013. The first question was always, “Who else is doing this?” followed by, “Which of our competitors are doing this?”—then various modifiers about industry size or price point.

Brands are early adopting AI, because it’s hyped, and investors reward such adoption. Also, AI, unlike investing in ad buys or video production, is seen as a cost reduction. Since nearly everyone is now using AI, the bar for acceptable minimum content quality is now the floor. Outliers exist, but marketing materials from ads to blog posts are all using AI and all dropping in quality, but since it’s nearly everyone all at once, no single brand fell off.

But The Magic Better Is Coming

For AI the hype is about a future time when the tools get so good the ads, and trade policy it generates, are no longer bad. For the trade policy many feel this is growing pains for a long term better. I believe neither are true.

Hope is good, we need hope. The problem is when hope crosses into delusion. AI cannot advance in the way those who sell AI claim. The broad tariffs cannot create more affordable goods made at home by people with great jobs. The hallucination that better is just around the corner keeps people from making changes.

I cannot prove this, but I think AI art feels familiar because of the way humans dream when sleeping. The art is from memory, things are based on our understanding and interpolated. Clocks, hands and text are always off. All details are fabricated, AI is not reality, but similarish.

We Must Deal In Reality

Actions of government, and corporations are often taken under pretext. We cannot accept the pretexts, if we want to accomplish real change.

A universal data protection legislation would offer protection from not just TikTok, but also everyone else. If at that point someone said TikTok was a national security threat because they aren't playing by the rules. I would be inclined to believe them. But right now TikTok is no more a threat to data privacy or democracy than Meta, or Alphabet.

TikTok is a threat to Meta and Alphabet’s business dominance. Forcing TikTok to divest is a way to protect US tech oligopolies. The reality is TikTok is on the chopping block to help US companies with terrible track records around data privacy and security.

The pretext for the tariffs is bringing back jobs. The real purpose is to force the captains of industry to seek an audience with the king, to beg for exceptions he can grant or revoke on a whim. TikTok might stick around for years, but it’ll be kept on a leash, a few months at a time, just like the sweeping tariffs that may never fully happen, only to be threatened and then paused. That’s exactly how Donald Trump, the wannabe king, wants it.