When I use a word . . . Tariffs

A most beautiful word?

During his presidential campaign in 2024 Donald Trump was heard to say that “the most beautiful word in the dictionary today is the word ‘tariff.’ It’s more beautiful than ‘love’. It’s more beautiful than anything. It’s the most beautiful word. This country can become rich with the use—the proper use—of tariffs.”1

If President Obama modelled himself on President Lincoln, Trump seems to be modelling himself on William McKinley, who was president from 1897 until his assassination in 1901, having been re-elected in 1900, and whom Trump has called the Tariff King: “He spoke beautifully of tariffs. His language was really beautiful: ‘We will not allow the enemy to come in and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families unless they pay a big price, and the big price is tariffs.’” Trump made it sound as if he was quoting McKinley directly, but I have not found his supposed quote in any of McKinley’s speeches. What McKinley did say, in a speech in Orrville, Ohio, on 26 August 1890, accepting renomination to Congress, was:

“Of course, it [the House Tariff Bill] does not please other nations. It was not framed after that fashion. The Mills Bill did. President Cleveland’s free-trade message received only acclamations of praise from the nations of the world; our bill receives only condemnation and bitter denunciation; that is the precise difference. The bill now pending in the Senate was not made to please other nations. It was framed for the people of the United States as a defense to their industries, as a protection to the labor of their hands, as a safeguard to the happy homes of American workmen, and as a security to their education, their wages, and their investments. If it shall be enacted into law, I but assert a fact, which will be fully verified, and that thoughtful men everywhere will confirm, when I declare that it will bring to this country a prosperity unparalleled in our own history and unrivaled in the history of the world. And let me assure you that the bill will become a law. A Republican Senate will pass it, a Republican President will put upon it his seal of approval as soon as it shall reach him, and another great pledge of the Republican party will be kept and fulfilled.”2

McKinley’s 1890 controversial tariff, introduced when he was a member of the US Congress, was unpopular and led to his defeat as a congressman when prices rose as a result. However, when he was elected president and supported tariffs on foreign goods, stressing that they were to be used to protect manufacturers and not simply to raise revenue, there was rapid economic growth. On the other hand, expert responses to Trump’s suggestion that the imposition of tariffs would allow elimination of individual income tax included such comments as “It wouldn’t be feasible,” “It’s mathematically impossible,” and “Tariffs are at best a flat tax and more likely a regressive one.”1 The main difference between McKinley and Trump lies in the fact that the latter takes a businessman’s approach rather than a politician’s, concentrating on what profit he can make, or thinks he can make.

Since his election he has been introducing such tariffs, for example a 25% charge on some imports from his neighbours Canada and Mexico and an extra 10% on Chinese imports, although the actual impositions vary from time to time, sometimes seemingly by whim. The Mexican tariff, for example, was recently paused until April. It’s hard to keep up.

Beautiful or ugly?

Leaving aside the question of which dictionary Trump was referring to when proclaiming “tariff” to be “the most beautiful word in the dictionary today,” his remarks prompt linguistic comment. Having recently been surveying both the most beautiful and the most ugly words in English,34 of which I found 372 and 415 that had been respectively so labelled in articles and books, I can report that “tariff” is not to be found in either list. And while it has more phonological features that might lead to its being described as beautiful, emotional responses to it might be more likely to label it ugly. Take your pick.

Origins

The word “tariff” has its origin in a biliteral Semitic root, ‘rp, which meant to know or reckon. The two letters represented in this root are called resh and peh in Hebrew, and the peh can be pronounced in one of two ways, either hard, as /p/, or soft, as /f/.

An Arabic derivative of this root, ‘arrafa, to announce or inform, gave ta‘rif, notification. The turned comma in these transliterations represents the letter ayin, technically a voiced pharyngeal fricative, too subtle a sound for those who are not native speakers of the language to mimic, and which is usually left unpronounced. The Hebrew word for a tariff is ta‘areef, or in Hebrew script ﬨﬠﬧיִףּ, which should be read from right to left. The second letter from the right, the one that looks like a Y, is the ayin, and the vowels, which, when written in, go below the letters, have been omitted, as is common in Hebrew. In this case, the vowel sounds, the second /a/ and the /ee/ in ta‘areef, are implied respectively by the letters ayin and yod (the second letter from the end). The first, third, and fifth letters, counting from the right, represent the /t/, /r/, and /f/.

Meanings

A tariff was originally an arithmetical table or a ready reckoner, intended to be used, for example, as an aid in multiplication. In this sense the word first entered English at about the end of the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED),5 in a text titled The Arte of Warre written by the late William Garrard and corrected and finished by Captain [Robert] Hitchcock.6 The word appeared in a section titled “How battels of every number of footmen are compounded and placed together in order,” in which the authors recommended that one could “help one’s memorie with certain Tablei or Tariffas made of purpose to know the numbers of the souldiers that are to enter into ranke, and what number of rankes will performe the just square”; in doing so, “you can never erre, but … tell any numbers of souldiers whatsoever.”

At about the same time the word acquired another meaning: “An official list or schedule setting forth the several customs duties to be imposed on imports and exports; a table or book of rates; any item of such a list, the impost (on any article); also the whole body or system of such duties as established in any country.” This is the sense in which Trump uses the word, although he applies it to individual taxes, not a list of such.

Then in the middle of the 18th century the word acquired yet another meaning: “A classified list or scale of charges made in any private or public business.” And this is the sense in which it gains medical interest.

The Drugs Tariff

The Drugs Tariff is a list of the reimbursements that the NHS makes to pharmacies when they dispense prescribed medications or other items.7 Those amounts should not be confused with the prescription charge, which is what patients who are not exempt pay per prescribed item, currently £9.90.8 The Tariff, which is updated on the first day of every month, covers not only medicines but also appliances such as bandages, dressings, hosiery, hypodermic equipment, lymphoedema garments, incontinence appliances, stomal appliances, and prescribable foodstuffs. There are separate tariffs in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

The Drugs Tariff has three categories, A, C, and M:

● Category A includes medicines that are readily available as generic formulations with marketing approval. Previously, the reimbursement was based on a weighted average of the list prices from two wholesalers and two manufacturers of generics. Under new arrangements, starting in April-June 2024 the old arrangement is being gradually phased out, the new arrangements being scheduled to be fully operative by July 2025. Then the reimbursement prices will be set using information from suppliers obtained under the Health Service Products (Provision and Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018.9

● Category C items are medicines that are not readily available as generic products. In such cases, the price is based on that of a particular proprietary product, manufacturer, or supplier.

● Category M also includes drugs that are readily available as generic formulations with marketing approval; but in this case the secretary of state calculates the reimbursement price based on information obtained under the Health Service Products (Provision and Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018.

Under the old arrangements, a problem arose when branded medicines in category C, in which prices were capped, went off patent, when they could become available as generic products and be moved to category A, in which the prices were not capped. Products in category A have to be marketed as non-branded products, which supposedly increases competition, driving prices down. However, if Category A drugs are little used, there may be no competition and anyone who markets them can charge what they want.

I have previously illustrated the extent of the price changes that resulted from this anomaly, using doxepin as an example, although other drugs were similarly affected, including carbimazole, clonazepam, hydrocortisone, liothyronine, olsalazine, primidone, and trifluoperazine.10

Under the new arrangements, the rules state that “for products that are moved from Category M (or in exceptional circumstances from Category C) to Category A, their prices will be based only on information from suppliers obtained under the Health Service Products (Provision and Disclosure of Information) Regulations 2018.”

A final thought

The most recently introduced meaning of the word “tariff” is a judicial one5: “Any one of a series of scales suggesting standard penalties for certain categories of crime and injuries, used as an unofficial means of determining sentences or damages.” This meaning dates from the 1950s, and the values listed in the tariff are determined by such institutions as the Crown Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Magistrates’ Association.11

It would, in my view, be a crime if Trump imposed his kind of tariffs on medicinal and other healthcare products, although it is not inconceivable that he might. I suspect, without expert knowledge about this, that the multinational nature of large pharmaceutical companies would deter any such move, but I cannot be sure. After all, Trump has justified his imposition of tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico on his view that those countries have, as he asserted in his address to Congress on 4 March, “allowed fentanyl to come into our country at levels never seen before.”