Since the early of this year, import tariff manipulated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s has been threatening economic activities in almost all the countries. Many economists and entrepreneurs take strong opposition against his abnormal tariff rates, warning they will collapse the world economy. They do cry not only against the drastic tax rate change but also against the shutdown of unlawful emigrants into the U.S. While those two issues are different in terms of viewpoint, the bottomline seems to be the same. As you remember, Trump criticizes huge trade deficits of the U.S., enormous U.S. financial aides toward overseas including military expenses for Ukraine as well as rushing unlawful foreigners, all of which bring economic and social problems into the U.S. society. He also claims that the U.S. is becoming lawless society with rampant unlawful immigrants and those related nations exploiting large benefits from the fertile land. Probably, middle-class U.S. citizens agree to those points, and it is plausible for them that Trump demanded Ukrainian President Zerensky express gratitude for America as the latter has only been seeking broad financial package without displaying concrete estimates and usage details. The focal point of Trump’s saying is, as always reiterates, to win back pride and self-respect of Americans, which should be based on firm national identity. If permitted to interpret his mind, it might be summarized as the following:“A wealthy house owner was very open and always welcomed unknown visitors to his house with serving free accommodation, food and convenience for them. Increasing visitors became gradually accustomed to such incredible hospitality and generosity and finally cried for much more demand such as persistent supply of money and property, so on.” In that situation, is the visitors’ continuous demand based on fairness and justice? Does the master have to devote them until his property is perished? Maybe, you can get answer from Aesop’s Fables. After all, there is no doubt that Trump is trying to propose
a question about entity as a nation. So, it seems that economic and
financial argument against him misses the point.(Takashi Higashi, President, TCS)
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