Sichuan Pepper Tariff Trouble

So I thought this was going to be diverting. Nutrition and Dietary Inflammatory Indices of the Eight Major Cuisines of China, a study published in BMC Nutrition in late March, analyzed data indicating that out of all China’s major cuisines, Sichuan cuisine is the least inflammatory. This was a surprise to me, since the study also notes that Sichuan cuisine boasts the highest-fat content of the eight big cuisines, a nutritional fact that I am well-acquainted with. I render my own lard.

This is great news for Sichuan food obsessives, because as the study notes, “inflammation is involved in various stages of atherosclerosis, cancer, diabetes, asthma, depression, metabolic syndrome, and numerous other diseases.” It’s always gratifying when something you are passionate about turns out to be good for your health. Unfortunately, the study does not go into great detail as to why Sichuan cuisine is relatively less inflammatory. It may have to do with the paucity of sugar in Sichuan cuisine. Another possibility is that, along with Shandong, Sichuan uses considerably more garlic and ginger than other regional Chinese cuisines. Garlic and ginger, of course, are ancient wonder drugs.

Of late, I haven’t been writing as much about Sichuan food as the foundational premise of this newsletter would imply, so I originally viewed this nutritional study as a fun way to get back to basics. But even as I was mulling over how to proceed, I received two emails over the last week from companies that market high-end Sichuan ingredients. Both noted that Trump’s tariffs are poised to wreak havoc on their business models. One claimed costs would rise 160 percent, the other, 145 percent! Neither expressed much certainty about what would really happen, which is excusable, since the Trump administration doesn’t even know how its own tariff plan works, but there can be little doubt, barring a total about-face from Trump, that my trips to 99 Ranch are about to get a lot more expensive. So much for my Sichuan food health plan!

Health impacts aside, a surge in the cost of Sichuan pepper and Pixian doubanjiang can hardly be considered egregious when viewed against the larger context of the daily catastrophes unleashed by the Trump administration. I will survive. But I couldn’t help muttering darkly to myself when I saw the news reports a few days ago about how Trump had agreed to carve out tariff exemptions for smartphones and computers and other high tech devices (representing a whopping 25 percent of Chinese exports to the United States). Classic Trump! Is anyone better at waving the white flag before even engaging in battle?

Forget about getting back to basics! I cannot resist linking this news directly to one of the threads in my recent newsletter series. Because if there is any positive case to be made for the notion that tariffs could bring high tech manufacturing back to the United States, the rationale is be found in the clear and obvious damage that outsourcing and offshoring by U.S. technology corporations, dating all the way back to the 1950s, did to working class Americans. High-tech’s relentless quest for cheap labor is one of the storylines at the heart of The Secret of the Sichuanese iPad.

I don’t think there is the remotest chance that Trump’s incompetently and economically ignorant tariff rollout will achieve its goal of reversing decades of globalization, but I could understand the motivation. What amazes me is how quickly Trump caved – and how obvious it is that the people who really are going to pay the price for his trade war are the same people who have historically been the victims of global labor market restructuring: The people on constrained budgets who have no leverage.

If you can afford, like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, to pay a million bucks to attend a dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, or, like Apple’s Tim Cook, to donate a million bucks to Trump’s inauguration, you can apparently guarantee a warm reception for your pleas to escape the tariff hammer and blithely go forward perpetuating exactly the kind of globalized labor exploitation that tariffs are supposed to address.

But if you are trying to run a Chinese restaurant, or import Sichuan spices, or simply struggling to keep your grocery budget under control, there is no similar path to remediation. You are utterly powerless.

The implications stretch well beyond 99 Ranch. Any small or medium-sized business that depends on Chinese imports will be screwed without recourse, and all of us will have to negotiate the higher prices on daily necessities sure to come down the pike. The tech titans protect their revenue streams, while we pay more at Walgreens and Costco. And our blood pressure boils higher by the day, no matter how much Sichuan food we eat.