By Max Fontaine | Father, Gardener, Editor

Mayor Forrest Bunkard on Tuesday signaled to Bass Lake sister city Beijing that he is considering imposing import tariffs to equalize what he called a “classic 1970s trade imbalance.”

Bunkard said he is shocked at the number of goods flowing into Bass Lake from Beijing at a time when local exports the other way have virtually ceased.

“Local exports the other way have virtually ceased,” Bunkard said. “I’m shocked.”

Bunkard said he caught wind of the unequal situation while shopping at a local merchant over the weekend.

“I was in Beijing Bait and Tackle looking for a new spinner and got talking to Johnny Wen,” the mayor said. “Naturally, we wandered into the weeds of the Nixon trip in ’72. It was the weekend that changed the world.”

The mayor said Nixon’s trip set pop culture back “tens of months” while the impact of the junket on the favorable exchange of goods was negligible.

“Nixon’s visit was a cheap ploy to distract the world from Led Zeppelin’s disastrous fourth album,” Bunkard said.  “We had nothing going on with China and then all of a sudden, blammo! It was like the British Invasion of ’64, only with no Brits or any of their related products including the Beatles. Stairway to Menswear. Same-same today.”

Bunkard’s plan is to impose a three-tenths of one percent tariff on all crickets and nightcrawlers imported to Bass Lake from Beijing and “thereabouts.”

Wen, Bass Lake TV’s “Fish Tracker” and owner/operator of Beijing Bait & Tackle, is from Beijing. Wen, who called the scheme “Bunkardesque,” moved to Bass Lake nearly a quarter of a decade ago as part of the Bass Lake-to-Beijing Sister City Initiative.

“I can track a bluegill,” Wen said, “but I can’t follow him at all. He is a human trombone.”

As a matter of law, imposing tariffs of any sort falls outside the purview of mayor Bunkard’s authority.

Nonetheless, Bunkard plans to introduce the measure at the next town meeting.

“Law schmlaw,” Bunkard said. “I wasn’t elected to obey the law. I was elected to right the wrongs as per the history of western civilization.”