Spurious News: Trump imposes 55 percent tariff on French drains! [View all]

PALM BEACH, FLA (Spurious News Network) -- President-for-Life Donald Trump today imposed a 55 percent tariff on the importation of French drains, a common landscaping and civil engineering feature.

"It is totally unfair to American drain companies that French drains have been allowed to take over and push American drains off the market. As your favorite president, it is my duty to Make American Drains Great Again! And by collecting tariffs on these un-American drains we can eliminate income tax once and for all."

John Martin, director of trades group Allied General Contractors, points out this tariff will probably not have its desired effect. "A French drain is a ditch full of gravel, sometimes with a perforated pipe in it. No one's ever imported one from France or anywhere else because they are created on site."

Anne-Marie Carpentier, spokesperson for the French Embassy in Washington, is similarly confused: "French drains are named after an American whose family name was French. They have nothing to do with France, except that we use them too. What is he going to do next, tariff French fries?"

In a subsequent announcement made after Ms. Carpentier spoke, Trump placed a 43-percent tariff on French fries - a product mostly made in the states of Idaho and Washington. In response, McDonald's Corporation, the largest seller of French fries in the United States, simply stuck a piece of duct tape over the word "French" on their menu boards and went back to work. Said a McDonald's spokesperson, "it stays there until he's gone, and we're placing a 43-percent retaliatory tariff on food sold to Donald Trump."