Liberation or Ruination Tarrifs – Part 2

Q: What do you see as the most likely outcome of the imposition of reciprocal tarrifs? Will it lead to more chaos or do see a workable logic that might justify all these chaos that is currently canalling thru the global economy?

A: I don’t see these tarrifs in terms of finality, not yet at least simply because in the short term it would hurt American firms more than the host countries. Trump is after all a negotiator and that simply means he is amenable to wheeling and dealing. My feel is he doesn’t yet appreciate the nuanced aspects of what America will lose and some of these advantages are difficult to quantify and even ascribe a monetary value to it. How for instance do you put a value on five US military bases in the archipelago of the Philippines. At one level you could say all these bases are a drain on US resources, but then again how does the US secure its geo economic and military sphere of influence without them? So these bases or the right to fly or sail military aircrafts or vessels across another countries airspace or seas does certainly have an intrinsic value, the main problem as I see it is this – these nuanced aspect of what the US gets out from a deal hasn’t really been factored into the whole formula of the reciprocal tarrif plan. Surprisingly it has not been widely discussed either. By nuanced I am referring to what is termed as the practical necessity calculations such as how can the Seventh fleet continue to do what it does in the South China seas and the Indo Pacific and Oceania if it cannot even dock and get resupplied in Asia? Even the Chinese couldnt run away from these practical necessity calculus when they set about building a blue water fleet. To even implement their string of pearls strategy a slew of concessions had to be offered to those host countries. For example one of reasons why Russia suported the Assad’s Baathist clan had to do interdicting efforts on the part of the Saudis to build a gas pipeline thru Syria to Turkey to supply Europe and compete with Gazprom. The other compelling reason was Russia needed to keep its Naval bases in Tartus intact to counterbalance the US sixth fleet that operates out of Italy to secure its interest in the mediterranean. Kompf the short answer to your question is simply this- these tarrifs are not final. They cannot be.

maybe the question now simply boils down to this one question Kompf – who are the people who read this blog entries?