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The latest U.S. Imperial Tariffs have just come into effect, and they have been (quite correctly) described by CNN et al. as "historic" and "remaking global trade", with the mainstream media grudgingly accepting that yes, sure TRUMP might have imposed his order on the world and won the trade war, but how is he finding the time to win golf championships besides? This further includes an acknowledgement from the local broadsheet that TRUMP is indeed a charismatic figure (Art of Charisma, anyone?), which supports our assertion early June that if he has a fault, it's in being too nice. But more on this* later. The U.S. bureau chief of our national newspaper of record* would moreover reference "strategy" (in various forms) thrice in the first three paragraphs of her front-page report on the event, followed the next day by a piece on Singapore reviewing its economic strategy, very much in line with this blog's prediction of "Strength, Respect, Strategy" as deciding The Greatest Game. On that last, the media has also been (belatedly) churning out articles on how GEOTUS applied strategy and game theory with his tariffs, and how it was all about re-establishing American primacy actually.  Essentially, this happened. (Original source: mangadex.org) Now, one thinks it only fair to reiterate that most of this has long been projected on this blog, with TRUMP's game theory and strategy presented in early February, right after he announced his tariff intentions. Following that post, the Liar Game framing/world model was then used to predict and explain each of the strategic moves before the fact, beginning with the extension of tariffs to China and the E.U. in particular, their application on the whole world as a statement of Strength, the play for Russia, the targeting of BRICS+, and more besides. Updating the tariff tables, there has (expectedly) been plenty of action right before the clock ran down on August 1st, with the knee-bending in Washington D.C. proceeding at a frenetic rate unseen since that exceedingly peculiar and slightly-ludicrous spate of virtue-signalling circa 2020-2021, which has seemingly been largely erased from the collective memory (pandemics cause people to do the darndest things**):  Artist's sketch of scenes outside the White House, late July 31st [N.B. About seven lucky participants bent in time.] [N.N.B. Bessent: No panic please, what's the hurry? Take your time, guys!] (Source: xbato.com)
As might be observed from the updated table, eight of the top fifteen U.S. trading partners by goods trade have successfully bent the knee to The Emperor by his first solid deadline, which accounts for about US$2 trillion (~38%) of their US$5.3 trillion total annual goods trade, which currently comes with a US$1.2 trillion annual deficit (and "just" US$0.9 trillion after including services, honestly no small matter) Certain other patterns have also revealed themselves, one hopes - common amongst most of the entities even allowed to bend the knee at this stage, is their status as official U.S. allies (e.g. the E.U., Japan, South Korea, the U.K., Thailand, the Philippines) or quasi-aligned entities (e.g. Taiwan). The main exceptions have been relatively-friendly-or-neutral ASEAN nations, that the U.S. apparently is still hoping to sway to their side (i.e. Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia), with the granting of a reprieve to Cambodia probably to sow some discord (on top of their obeying Imperial dictates of a ceasefire with Thailand) Cambodia have also become the third country to nominate TRUMP for the Nobel Peace Prize this year alone (the others being Pakistan and Israel, kinda covering representatives from three major religions), not that this will convince the notably-elitist and stuck-up committee from giving due consideration, with his online odds reflecting only a 35% chance at best (but then he's been pretty good at beating the odds, so, yeah) While politicians and citizens of these countries may be decrying the new tariff rates, they might yet count themselves extremely fortunate soon enough, with the U.S. administration quite meaningfully declaring that they would be building a new (privately-funded, heh) ballroom at the White House, apparently to stow the incumbent's inordinately-yuge orbs. As for the reasoning, GEOTUS has explicitly voiced his dislike for (white) tents - which coming together with the razing-and-paving of the venerable Rose Garden, strikes one as an obvious sign of what is next to come (the red tent - more tacos, anyone?)  Their very own Rosen Garten Saga! (Source: people.com) [*The State's Times has by the way just celebrated 180 years of being Singaporeans' "trusted news source", which somehow recalls Fox News' self-proclamation as being "Most Trusted"; to their credit, they did review a recent musical casting LKY as a veritable Romeo as having him "barely recognisable as the famously iron-ored founding father" - i.e. most of that basically never happened, especially the showcased lovers-separated-by-Kempeitai encounter. To this, I can only repeat the assessment from before: LKY is a great enough man, and inarguably The Greatest Singaporean; is there really a need to resculpt his image into someone he never was? Promising to make his opponents "crawl on bended knees, and beg for mercy" sure didn't do his legacy much harm, though it does make simply "bending the knee" sound quite dignified in contrast! Serendipitously, America has just shut down their Corporation for Public Broadcasting towards balancing the budget, which appears to have affected the NPR, PBS and other domestic local public media. On this, another famous LKY quote springs to mind: It is like making love - it is always easier the second time! Well, I have it on good authority that having a single state-accepted group of media outlets (likely Fox-NYP-Hannity and maybe the WSJ, what with legacy programmes like The Late Show falling out of favour) works quite well - and after awhile, the audience won't even notice Fox becoming the new PBS.] [**On this, U.S. health authorities have apparently just found that mRNA vaccines do not in fact effectively protect against COVID and flu, which has brought objections to the effect that the technology behind mRNA won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2023. To this, one can only recall how Ivermectin literally won the same Nobel in 2015 for its human applications (alongside Tu Youyou for her TCM-inspired use of Artemisinin), only for it to be mocked as "horse paste" during the pandemic, with baldfaced fraud on alternative early treatments and state-run propaganda campaigns against non-mRNA vaccines coming alongside that. Given all the ignoble history*** behind The Pandemic Game, one hopes it reasonable to reserve judgment pending the release of relevant evidence - and in the meantime, please do trust the scientific and medical authorities responsible!] [***China has responded in the national paper's Forum section on the hacking accusations, in which they stated that the newspaper had taken a preconceived position on China's complicity in the original commentary, before going on to claim that some 63% of cyber attacks on their Asian Winter Games systems came from the U.S., with 15% from Singapore. Actually, on this, I have always wondered how it is possible to identify hacking groups with any degree of certainty, given that they aren't exactly leaving calling cards. Apparently, the methods and tools used, as well as the targeted data, are used as part of a digital fingerprint, but one figures this sort of thing to be especially amenable to false-flag operations.] [To be continued...] Next: Deepest, Darkest, Dankest
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