Comments from Walla on my article “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the Outright Stupid”

Readers might have noticed that my articles would at times attract lengthy comments and additional facts or information from a certain Walla. Walla is an extremely knowledgeable man; he did his degree at the University of Malaya. Even though he has some health issue to cope, he lives happily with his wife in a suburb of Petaling Jaya. One of his great granduncles was none other than the great physician Dr Wu Lien-teh who was the first medical student of Chinese descent to study at the University of Cambridge and the first Malayan nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1935. Another uncle of his was tasked with launching Kolej Tunku Abdul Rahman, which is now called Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology (TAR UMT).

I thought I should do justice to his effort and taking the liberty to forward his four sets of comments on my article to friends…

First Set of Comments:

Voltaire, France's greatest man of letters, Goethe, Germany's greatest poet, once wrote:

Reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gaiety, pathos, sublimity and universality—perfection indeed—behold Voltaire.”

Trump? the opposite, presumably. In fact, Greenstein of Princeton suggested six qualities that bear on presidential performance. They are: public communication, organisational capacity, political skill, vision, cognitive style, and emotional intelligence.

He opined Trump scores low on all except for public communication (read: lies) and political skill (read: mass manipulation); those skills were practiced by no less than Goebbels who said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

And their belief in him which has swept him into high office after two dramas in the mould of Sky TV's The Day Of The Jackal (psst: weekly episodes 6 & 7 of Season 1 a click away - now) will enable him to roll out the biggest mass deconstruction of US institutions, apexed in the US Supreme Court whose composition has been tilted by his first-term appointments of like-minded Kavanaugh and Barrett; as President-elect and with all three wings of the government under him, he will no doubt next fill the other posts being vacated by two retiring judges, thus paving the way for him to be not just President but also El Presidente, “Teflon-ized’ from all prosecutions of his past misdemeanours and paving the way for him to install the most right-wing conservative protectorate in American history since the days of the Roman Empire.

While his campaign to make America Great Again may carry a point or two, it will come at cost of seeding institutional chaos which in turn provides the very justifying excuse to grab more political power in the land of so-called democracy, thus self-reinforcing his core craving for reality-tv mass adulation.

That craving can be understood; enriched by his father's legacy, he went bust 6 times to the extent of even going broke running cash-cow casinos while stiffing payments to his suppliers, preening by allusion how smart was a relative in MIT, and saying as a property developer, it's all about construction, thus that Wall, however unfinished for being tunnelable, and yet Mexico has failed to pay for it. That's why by climbing to the land's highest office, he can now claim instant erasure of his past failures before the eyes of his frenzied supporters.

Today, this Wharton product, albeit of charlatanry not wall-street sell-side analysis, is ready to unleash the most disruptive force in global trade policy based on questionable tactics that remain the nightmare not just of world leaders but also bankers, traders and industrialists who think he is likely to do what he, fed on cheeseburgers and fringy tv news, has promised in his campaigns, all without facts and reasoning but only made up inchoately as only a perambulating Jack Sparrow might. To wit? the antithesis of his German roots. Except for a certain OCD fastidiousness.

Could it all be his poker play charade at the art of the deal by disrupting the cards table so as to pre-scare others to foist give-away concessions before sealing MOUs?

Alas for him, he forgets in the case of China which is his primary target for all blames, the Chinaman who is behind you as you enter through the hotel revolving door miraculously appears in the lobby in front of you. So said of the Shanghainese. China has more others; he has yet to meet a Fujianese. And the Teochew is on reserve.

Second Set of Comments:
Meanwhile, Trump has picked the following:

Marco Rubio (State); Howard Lutnick (Commerce); Matt Gaetz (AG); Peter Hegseth (Defense); Tulsi Gabbard (Intelligence); Robert F Kennedy, Jr (Health); Michael Walz (National Security) Kristi Noem (Homeland Security); Thomas Homan (Border); Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy (Efficiency); Lee Zeldin (Environment); Susie Wiles White House); Elsie Stefanik (UN); Douglas Burgum (Interior); Linda McMohon (Education); and John Radcliffe (CIA).

At time of going to LYB Press, the following have not been filled – Kash Patel (FBI); Lighthizer (Trade); Kevin Warsh, Marcus Rowan, William Hagerty, Scott Bessent (Treasury).

In any case, Trump rewards supporters, so behind Lutnick will be Lighthizer behind whom Navarro behind whom Bannon; all four are unreconstructed anti-China tariff-men and decouplers.

Unlike Xi’s technocrats who have already displayed publicly recorded achievements on their way up, it is apparent the abovenamed are just Trump loyalists who happen to be chosen because they are trumpeteers and Trump is insecure, thus needing yes-men who will toe his line and do as he has promised to his voters who remain bestirred and clueless to a fault on all important matters, and plainly too lazy to research and think through more thoroughly; even Musk almost came undone with Tesla and SpaceX but for a subsidy.

Furthermore, Trump has just asked his Vance to prevail upon the bipartisan Ethics Committee not to make public any report after it investigates Gaetz and Hegseth on their peccadilloes. What is there to hide if one is to be publicly answerable – unless there is, and one isn’t.

Third Set of Comments:
The other tedious note is on trade balance, tariff, and decoupling. Trump is under the mistaken notion trade deficits can be reduced and more jobs created by just tariffing imports.

However doing so will instead cause tariffed exporters to reshore to other countries so that as long as the US imports to consume, its overall trade balance is not reduced.

Is Trump to tariff those other countries next? As a major consumer economy, the US will soon have to tariff every other country which exports into it who have reshored assets from the tariffed countries.

The result will be the US ends up isolating itself by tariffing itself in effect; at the same time, its own exports won’t find ready markets in other countries which will seek friendlier substitutes.

As for jobs, the last time Trump did it, US overseas companies moved their assembly lines to other countries instead of their US and absorbed his tax reductions in share buy backs. By example, the US steel and aluminium industry remains subdued despite protectionist tariffs.

There is historical precedent in the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of 1930; the US tariffed 40% of imports; other countries retaliated with their own tariffs; global trade crashed by 65% and the US exacerbated its own Great Depression; in the post-crisis aftermath starting 1938, the trade-to-GDP ratio was 20% lower than what it was in 1929. Everyone suffered.

Some may argue that during Biden’s carry-on of Trump’s first-term tariffing, the US economy grew. But that’s ignoring the economic growth came from pent-up consumerism by spending covid-dispensed helicopter money, debt-inflating tax reduction, government projects, and oil and arms exports to Europe.

Moreover, it’s a given that richer countries will face manufacturing job declines because their output per worker grows faster in manufacturing than in services by dint of automation and systems replacing workers, and secondly, people will spend more in services than on manufactures as they become richer – whatever the trade balance.

But this will unfortunately be lost on Wharton-trained Trump et al who thinks for the US, it should still be in the 50s.

The bromide is simple – Trump should ask Lighthizer and Lutnick to survey how many rustbelt workers are still unemployed owing to jobs emigrating overseas by globalization.

If the US economy is said to be humming, all would already be employed so why the need to tariff imports for purpose of creating jobs by import substitution for them?

In fact, they may lose their present jobs when US tariffs make their purchases pricier, inflation comes back post-Powell to trigger higher interest rates and thus magnify financing costs and reduce new investments amidst retaliation by other countries.

European plants are already mulling to move to the US to avoid Trump’s 10-20% preannounced tariffs but what be their workers?

The world is too integrated down to supply-chain nerve endings for Trump’s madcap trumponomics.

Fourth Set of Comments:
Whether it be Biden or Trump, the US is in a diddly-squat mess.

On the other hand, across the oceans, China remains consistent, calm and collected.

Xi told Biden but for the ears of Trump ahead that China’s four redlines must not be crossed – Taiwan, sovereignty, system and development – and these redlines are canopied in the context of US-China relations by two remits – that China harbors no direct intention to displace the US, and that mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation must form the underpinning principles of healthy and progressive relations.

However, one is not naïve to think the US vulgarians can fathom the depth of these practicalities.

This means China may hope for the best from the US but be prepared for worse to come. She has already been doing so since 2012.

Many moons ago, I was in an SME hub in Dalian. The toner maker said two things – that he was upgrading with new machinery for value-adding, and that it’s all about supply chains.

Despite roiling turmoil, China has reemerged again and again. The Chinese are proud survivors and verdant pragmatists. Of the last 20 out of 22 centuries, China was the biggest economy in the world; in 1820 alone, China comprised one third of the world’s GDP, more than the US and Europe combined.

Maybe that’s why the lion still roars:

End.