Meme History: Tariff memes
Show me a meme genre that has the internet all at once shouting about egg prices, penguins, and world history, and I’ll show you a moment of economic panic that has some people out of work, others dumping their entire life savings, and still others making a killing off a moment where they were able to buy low.
The Tariffs
In the spring of 2025, Donald Trump enacted tariffs that led to some of the most dramatically volatile days for the stock market, and the economy writ large, in modern history.
It was an aggressive move, affecting everyone from America's closest neighbors like Canada and Mexico, to flightless birds on the other side of the world. But today we’re not here to talk about politics, we’re here to talk about memes.
This is an unusual one for us, because most memes are a format used to comment on a range of things, but this one is a little inside out—instead of a single meme focused around a range of topics, it's often a range of memes focused around a single thing. For instance, in a play on a viral TikTok phrase, we have the Canadian themed “Fuck aboot and find oot.”
We also have riffs on Star Wars lore, featuring the beloved if sassy K2SO telling us: “Congratulations, we’re being liberated."
Meanwhile, other meme creators are taking the obvious opportunity to riff on the evergreen JD Vance meme genre.
The possibilities here are endless. They can encompass any genre and be applied to any fandom, as long as they come with the requisite level of snark.
Depression memes
But the bleakest of these fall into the category of equally bleak-labeled “Depression memes.” For students of history, it’ll be difficult not to think of the 1930s, specifically the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which historians and economists alike mostly agree made the Great Depression worse, just after the 1929 stock market crash.
They say those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it, sooooo are Depression memers trying to do a public service, or are they just fishing for upvotes?
You can decide.
Trump take nest egg
On a lighter, but not much lighter note, another flavor of tariff memes comes in the form of “Trump take nest egg.” This arose mostly on Bluesky. In them, posters simply invoke the phrase over and over again. Imagery of any kind is totally optional.
They’re a riff on the previous “Trump take egg” trend—which wasn’t even about tariffs per se, just about how there’s an egg shortage and how people blame the current administration. Most of those memes take place in grocery stores in the United States, but food shoppers aren’t the only ones who should ostensibly be worried.
Trump penguin tariff memes
Virtually all municipalities are affected by these tariffs, and that includes a very small one on the other side of the world—a remote Australian territory known as the Heard and McDonald Islands. There’s just one problem.
The island has no permanent human residents. Instead, its most significant presence is a group of Eastern Rockhopper Penguins. And if injustice toward cute fauna isn’t a recipe for preposterous memes, I don’t know what is.
Nearly invoking a classic Monty Python sketch wherein Graham Chapman’s “Brian” tells a crowd they’re good people because they have jobs, while the birds don't, this one begs for photoshops, AI art, or mere Dreamworks screenshots.
Are the penguins really preparing a full military strike against the United States? No.
But is Donald Trump at least going to go down there and give the Penguins a piece of his mind? Also no.
But is there any money to be made from tariffing penguins? Also also no.
But are the memes fresh and crunchy and good for likes and upvotes? Well, yes, actually.
So goes the famous Albert Einstein quote, “in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity.”
If the April 2025 meme scene wasn’t a moment that proved that in the most succinct way possible, then I really don’t know what we’re doing here.
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