What Trump’s favourite word reveals about centuries of empire, economy, and exchange.
Donald Trump has proudly declared “tariff” his fifth favourite word. At this point, many (including him) consider the word a totem of American economic power. Few appreciate the global journey the word made before ever reaching Washington.
In the 16th century, long before America’s rise, the Ottoman Empire controlled trade routes stretching across several continents. Merchants from Europe, Africa, and Asia travelled through it, bringing language along with their goods. The word ta’arif, from Arabic, meaning “to announce” or “to make known” was used in trading documents to list various kinds of fees. From there, it passed into Persian and Ottoman Turkish, and then into the languages of southern Europe, becoming tariffa in Italian and tarif in French. Finally, the word ‘tariff’ entered the English language.
Dr Canan Torlak, an economic historian based in Istanbul, says the word has long carried more than a merely technical meaning, developing overtones of power: who gets to apply a tariff, how much and on whom? “The Ottomans taxed foreigners more than their own people,” she explains: “it was a political tool, just like today”.
Trump’s tariffs, aimed at protecting US industries, follow the same principle. And so, a word born in the markets of Istanbul lives on in modern-day America.
Original article was written in Hausa and published in TRT Afrika on 18 April 2025. It’s available here.
TRT Afrika is a subsidiary of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation offering African news coverage in English, Hausa, Swahili and French.
