MARTINSVILLE, VA — Buford Eggert leans against his old Ford tractor, chewing idly on an alder twig. Before him, his prized pig rolls around in its wallow.
“No flash photography,” Eggert jokes. “This here is the world’s most important pig.”
Eggert isn’t exaggerating. His pig — named “Arnold Ziffel” after Eggert’s late uncle Arnold Ziffel — wields an enormous amount of power, and the future of the stock market rests on his pink, delicious back.
Unlike most pigs, Arnold’s day job is deciding what tariffs the U.S. will impose on foreign nations.
“He’s some pig,” said Eggert, owner of Eggert’s Soybean Farm, Apple Orchard, and International Trade Commission. “What happened was, I had a little article in the paper a couple months back about how my pig could predict when it was going to rain. Well, some government type saw that, and I guess a whole lot of folks in the federal government have been laid off and they’re looking for cheap labor, so I got a phone call asking me about how accurate ol’ Arnold’s predictions were and whether he could do any other tricks.”
“Next thing I know,” Eggert said, “Arnold’s got him a job determining our international trade policy.”
The process is simple, Eggert said. Each morning, he and his farmhands apply stickers to 100 different apples. The stickers say things like “China 150%” or “Canada 45%.” The apples are dropped into Arnold’s trough, and Eggert carefully monitor which apples the pig eats. The results are then reported directly to the White House and the new tariffs are immediately Tweeted to the world at large by the President, just as our Founding Fathers intended.
“There are special cases, of course,” Eggert says. “For example, what if Arnold eats one apple that says ‘Canada 75%’ and another that says ‘Canada 40%?’ In that case, the President puts a 75% tariff on Canada that morning, and then the next day, he announces the tariff will be suspended for 40 days. It’s a right elegant system.”
There are also ‘Dealer’s Choice’ apples, Eggert added. When Arnold eats one of those, Eggert throws a dart at a spinning globe and then counts up the change in his pocket.
“Yesterday we put a 78% tariff on some place called ‘Queen Maud Land,’” Eggert said. “Woulda been higher, but I bought a thing of chewing gum that morning.”
Since Arnold joined the federal workforce, other animals on Eggert’s farm have also been recruited, he said.
“My rooster is the Undersecretary of Housing and Urban Development,” he said. “That cow over there disburses grants for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. And my goat tracks immigration enforcement data for ICE.”
“Poor goat’s up to three packs a day,” Eggert added. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown, you know.”
However, given his impact on the tariffs the U.S. is imposing around the world, Arnold remains the star of Eggert’s humble farm.
When asked for a window into the insight Arnold uses to choose where to apply tariffs, Eggert simply laughed.
“Truth is, that pig don’t know what the hell he’s doing,” Eggert said. “He’s just in it for the apples.”
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