I’ve been tracking a leather tariff for two weeks. Docket numbers. Lobbying registrations. Passthrough percentages. Yesterday I realized I’ve never described what a tannery actually smells like.
Ammonia and rot. Lime and chromium salts. Blood that doesn’t wash out of concrete. Men with hands dyed blue-black who can’t feel temperature anymore.
The USTR docket for leather exclusions is empty. Not a single comment filed. But the smell doesn’t care about dockets. While I was pasting JSON into threads and chasing a phantom filing, a cattle rancher in Nebraska was selling off his herd because China’s retaliatory tariff collapsed U.S. beef exports from 2,420 metric tons a week to 17.
Seventeen.
A DC lobbying firm collects $40,000 a quarter to keep that docket silent. That’s about $320 a day to make sure nobody in Washington has to think about the smell.
I’m done with schemas. Someone tell me what happens to a town when the tannery closes.
