(My monthly guest column on the editorial page of the Jefferson City News-Tribune addressed this topic yesterday but of necessity it was much shorter and somewhat less candid, perhaps because I had lowered the steam pressure after starting on this version.)
There must be a reason why the highly-praised Wharton School that President Trump attended has never invited him back as a speaker. I wonder if anyone has investigated to find out who wrote his papers for him or even took tests for him.
His favorite course must have been Bankruptcy 101 and he must have slept through class every day the word “tariff” came up. The graduation program for his class does not list him for any honors and just has his name among all of the other graduates.
Stop me before I tell you what I really think.
Here is a story some nice people in a gentle English town. Stay with us. By the time we are finished the story will be about a person in a big American town who puts the “bully” into the ;political phrase “bully pulpit.”
(The phrase began with Theodore Roosevelt, one of the four faces on Mt. Rushmore, a monument he thinks he should—something even less possible than him winning the Nobel Price for Peace.) TR used the word “bully” as an adjective for “wonderful” or “superb.”
Sorry about that. We have wandered off the path.
Grasmere, a village of about 4,500 people in England’s Lake District, has been known for decades as the home of numerous poets, writers, artists, philosophers and other notables.
Poets William and sister Dorothy Wordsworth described it as “the loveliest spot that man hath ever found.”
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) are considered the founders of English Literature’s “Romantic Age.” Coleridge is said to have “muttered stanzas” of the Rime” while walking about the countryside nearby. The Wordsworths lived for a few years in Dove Cottage, where Coleridge also lodged for a time.
The Dove Cottage is still there as is The Swan, an inn where William sometimes dined with the famous poet Walter Scott.
More recently, Gordon Matthews Thomas Sumner had a home there. The world knows him better as the musical artist, Sting.
Perhaps better known than the poets, philosophers, and other notables who have lived there is Beatrix Potter, who gave the world Peter Rabbit and his friends. She also lived in the Lake District.
It was a coolish, dampish English day when we were there and we didn’t get to spend as much time as we wished, but that’s a penalty we paid for trying to hit some of the highlights of three countries—England, Wales, and Scotland in two weeks.
We had our lunch at the Grasmere Tea Room, ate outside on that pleasantly cool afternoon. I think we had Paninis, having a desire to break from fish and chips (we call them French Fries here). But we had been warned of interlopers that we were told were particularly aggressive that day—Jackdaws, a relative of crows and ravens. They liked to snatch food from tables.
Grasmere is, as is the case with many European communities, an old place, one where a 200-year old building is still relatively new. We have avoided describing it as “picturesque” because we imagine the locals have heard their town referred to that way and it has become cloying to them.
And “quaint” is a condescending word, too, so we didn’t use it. We liked Grasmere. It’s one of several small places we visited that we’d like to return to, despite the Jackdaws.
To the ancient Celts, Jackdaws were sacred birds that nested in church steeples, symbolic church guards. Like their Crow and Raven relatives, they are considered quite intelligent. We kind of thought the one perched on the back of a chair about twenty feet from our table was scheming to poach some of our lunch. But we kept a sharp eye on it and never let it have a chance.
What has all of this to do with Trump’s politically silly and nationally-damaging tariffs? We have vented about this in earlier posts but this time it’s personal.
Our excellent tour guide, Charlie Reader, gave us something else for which Grasmere is widely known.
We each got a couple of hand-wrapped gingerbreads. And we loved them.
More than 170 years ago, Victorian Cook Sarah Nelson began making gingerbreads in her 17th century home, using her “secret recipe” (that is still secret). Grasmere Gingerbreads are a cross between a cake and what the English call a biscuit—a cracker to us.
Sarah’s secret recipe now is guarded by Joanne and Andrew Hunter, third generation owners of the business which still operates from Sarah’s house. I wish we had known of the gingerbread house before we left the town—and had the time to visit it. But bus tours being bus tours, we had to be on our way after lunch.
The BBC has provided some looks at Sarah’s story and the wonderful products she created.
When we got home, I decided to secretly order a dozen of these gingerbreads to be delivered to our home each month. It was going to be a surprise Christmas present for Nancy but the surprise fell though when Diane Gallagher (probably) called from Grasmere and Nancy answered the phone. “There’s a lady from Grasmere on the phone asking for you,” she announced before listening to the conversation. Diane was calling to confirm the order. The first order came in the tin you see here. Subsequent orders have come in hand-wrapped paper packaging and are refills for the tin.
Each month we have looked forward to finding our little package by our front door about the 10th of each month. But on September 5, we received a note from Diane announcing the package had been shipped three days earlier but she understood “there have been delays at Customs and your parcel is due for delivery today.”
Then she wrote:
We believe the delays are because the US Government has now abolished the exemption for any parcel under a value of $800 from import duties. This may mean that you will be liable for import duties on delivery of the parcel. We are still trying to find out exactly what this will mean in monetary terms, but have reason to believe that for the next six months there will be a flat fee of $80 per parcel being sent from the UK.
Eighty dollars on a $30 package!!!
This is the results of Donald Trump’s ill-advised removal of the “de minimis” exemption for small packages from foreign countries. Packages worth less than $800 were exempt from tariffs until August 29 when he decided even the smallest item would cost a lot more.
The Universal Postal Union says postal deliveries from around the world to the United States dropped by EIGHTY PERCENT within two weeks after our economic genius President scribbled his name on the bottom of his executive order.
We were supposed to take delivery on Wednesday, September 10. Instead we got a “reschedule” notice from UPS telling us, “UPS is preparing your package for clearance. We will notify you if additional information is needed.”
Diane told us it would be okay to refuse to pay the duties. Afterward the company could tell the UPS to destroy the parcel and the amount remaining on our order would be refunded.
The order from Grasmere was held up for the better part of a week before it cleared customs in Louisville, Kentucky (why Louisville, we don’t know), and was to arrive at our house on Wednesday, September 10.
We decided to pay the duty because the folks in Grasmere had produced the gingerbreads and had shipped them to us in good faith but we decided to have them hold onto the rest of our funds until our country regained this small part of its sanity and allows something so benign as Grasmere Gingerbread to be shipped to Missouri without a duty or a tariff that our President is unable to admit punishes his own citizens.
Trump says his tariffs will force foreign manufacturers to build factories in this country. I am quite sure that Joann and Andrew Hunter are not going to establish a gingerbread manufacturing plant in this country because of this petty policy.
But if you are accumulating evidence of how idiotic Trump’s tariff policy is working, we offer this observation as a good example.
We are puzzled by the whole tariff/duty business even more because while we were waiting for our gingerbreads to trickle through the customs bureaucracy, we found a book on our doorstep that we had ordered from a company in Delhi, India. It took only ten days from the day I ordered it for it to arrive. I ordered the book on September 5. The company in Delhi gave it to FedEx on the tenth and five days later it was on my doorstep. Clearly, somebody in the customs office was asleep at the switch.
The gingerbreads? They were mailed on September 2, three days before the book was ordered and eight days before the book was shipped.
On Friday, September 25, we got a notice from UPS:
The status of your package has changed.
| Exception Reason: | The customs clearance has failed and the shipment is abandoned |
UPS told us on September 10 that the package was being prepared for clearance. We were to be notified if more information was needed. We were not notified of anything until the message that Grasmere Gingerbread package apparently is such a threat to our national security that it would be dangerous for it to be shipped from Louisville, Kentucky where it has been losing its freshness for three weeks.
We got a new note from from Diane;
On 18th September we asked UPS to destroy the parcels that had not cleared Customs, but it appears that this has not yet happened for all parcels. As well as the severe delays through Customs, it appears that parcels valued at less than £20 are incurring import duties of just under $70, which is just not viable. For these reasons, our directors have taken the decision to suspend shipping to the US and Canada temporarily.
I am very sorry about this.
UPS told us:
| Exception Reason: | Package cannot clear due to customs delay or missing info. Attempt to contact sender made. Package has been disposed of. |
Amazing. After all these months, UPS told us the reason UPS apparently could not get a straight answer from the customs people about the reason—it’s either “customs delay” or it’s “missing info.” What missing info? We are unlikely to ever learn why there was a delay and what information was missing in this shipment that wasn’t a problem earlier.
It’s a little package of a dozen Gingerbreads, for God’s sake!!!
It’s disgusting. But our president has taken “disgusting” to unprecedented levels in so many things.
I have notified Diane of our sincere apologies for the embarrassment this administration is. I wish we could go back to that beautiful part of our world to do it in person—-
—because he is creating so many things to apologize to the world for.
Is it too late for Wharton to ask for its diploma back?
(photos by BP. Gingerbread by the Grasmere Gingerbread Co., videos from the BBC)