As Donald Trump reportedly mulls leaving the World Trade Organization (WTO), a replacement bill - which would give the US president license to raise and lower tariffs at will - has Twitter sniggering. Its name? The FART Act.
Axios quotes an anonymous source in the White House as saying that Trump wants to withdraw the US from the WTO, an institution it helped set up over 20 years ago. “We always get f**ked by them,” Trump reportedly said to advisers, adding: “The WTO is designed by the rest of the world to screw the United States.”
While walking away from the WTO is unlikely, the Trump administration has reportedly drafted a bill that would grant him the authority to raise tariffs unilaterally on foreign goods without Congressional approval, defying WTO rules.
The bill, which has not been proven to exist, is reportedly titled the ‘US Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act’, or FART Act. Once Twitter caught wind of the name, the puns began to flow:
Some commenters wondered whether the Fart Act is for real, or the work of a cheeky troll within the Administration. They speculated whether the story was a leak to bait the media.
To others, the FART Act could be the work of a president who genuinely missed the joke. One user joked that Trump plowed ahead with the name, despite advice from his family.
Even former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci couldn’t resist a sneaky pun when he stepped in to criticize President Trump’s often-belligerent trade policies.
While the FART Act has not yet been confirmed to actually exist, President Trump would have a hard time passing such a bill. Congress would be extremely reticent to pass a bill that limits its input into trade decisions, and Congressional Republicans have already warned that tariffs would harm US workers.
Just this week, the EU warned the US that it could strike back with as much as $300 billion in retaliatory tariffs if the Trump administration moves ahead with new levies on European cars.
In a written statement to the US Department of Commerce, Brussels reportedly warned that imposing tariffs on European cars “will be harmful first and foremost for the US economy.”
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