Tariffs

The latest xkcd:

The mouseover title: ""You legs may have a comparative advantage at running, but we arms have a competitive advantage at swinging hammers, so unless you accept that we're the dominant limbs and stop hogging the oxygen, that running advantage won't be around for long.""

The associated explain xkcd observes that

This comic was published about a week after trade talks collapsed between the United States and Canada, leading to both levying heavy tariffs on each other.

The situation maps onto a recurring argument in U.S. trade politics: that a bilateral trade deficit is inherently a loss. Donald Trump has repeatedly made versions of this claim. For instance, he tweeted in 2019 that the U.S. was "losing, for many years, 600 to 800 Billion Dollars a year on Trade," and more recently cited Canada's trade surplus with the U.S. as part of a $200 billion figure the U.S. was supposedly "losing" to its northern neighbor. Commentary at the time noted that this framing treats the world as a zero-sum game, where anything not made domestically counts as a loss.

Another contextual joke, this time in video form: