Greetings, Voyager Anonymous! This is your May 2025 debrief from the Vegout Voyage HQ, handcrafted with care by your humble custodian. Materials henceforth are for your eyes only.

❤️ Think you got what it takes to crack the new Mini Voyage? 💙

History is a mirror that reflects the light of the past onto our present. Tariffs have long played a key role in trade policy around the world, often resulting in a complex web of tradeoffs.

The EU imposed anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures on solar panels from China, enforced from December 2013 until their cancellation in March 2017. While these measures protected the interests of EU manufacturers, the cancellation cited that “the market situation has not changed to the extent that this would justify a further extension of the measures.”

Fueled by post-WWII tensions, Japan imposed export restrictions in July 2019 on key materials essential to South Korea's tech industry. The move triggered economic downturns not only in South Korea but also in Japan, with ripple effects across regional and global markets. The negotiation efforts led by the US and the World Trade Organization (WTO) played an instrumental role in resolving the trade dispute by March 2023.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed in the US in 1930, one year after the onset of the Great Depression. President Herbert Hoover initially resisted the Act but eventually yielded to pressure from his Party and domestic business leaders. Countries including Canada, the British Empire, France, Australia, and Japan retaliated, lodged petitions, and formed new alliances. To this day, debate continues over whether the Act alleviated or worsened the Depression.

It is worth noting that tariffs back then accounted for roughly 30% of total US federal revenue—compared to around 15% in recent years.

Alternative tools for trade regulation are available. They include multilateral trade agreements that reduce barriers while establishing shared standards, non-tariff measures such as quotas and safety regulations, and digital trade policies that govern cross-border data flows and services. These approaches aim to balance domestic protection with international cooperation and economic efficiency.

Oh wait! There are three errors in this article! Can you spot them?

The "unfudged" version of this article was fact-checked by Originality.ai, headquartered in Ontario, and bias-checked by Samhoud, developed in the Netherlands and Singapore.

🇵🇪 Answers to the previous Mini Voyage 🇵🇪

Option B is the only correct pairing—did you get it right? The photo is indeed showing papas rellenas, stuffed potatoes.

In option A, causa refers to a layered Peruvian potato dish, which should be paired with the photo from option C! On the other hand, the option A photo shows an appetizer called papa a la Huancaina, which is potato with the creamy and spicy Huancaina sauce. Lastly, arroz chaufa in option C is a dish featuring fired rice—not potato at all!

🚀 Vegout HQ Happenings 🚀

I've been chatty this month, so let's wrap it up! All is well here; working on our new website and on book art revisions for the upcoming Iceland adventure. Which mockup catches your eye? Hit reply and lemme know!