In the Nineteen Century, France sent gunships to Viet Nam. The royal court debated frantically how to deal with the situation. The mandarins wanted to negotiate with France, but the generals led by Nguyen Tri Phuong fiercely objected. They disliked foreigners and they were patriotic. Unlike the Japanese and the Siamese who chose to talk to the Westerners, General Nguyen and his colleagues were heroic, willing to fight to the death. General Nguyen threatened to commit suicide if the king capitulated to the French’s demands.
How could the king ignore his entreaty, a patriot and his most loyal subject? The general got his wish.
In a battle in Hanoi, the general was captured by the French. Heroic to the end, he refused medical treatment by the French and starved himself to death.
His misunderstanding of the military capability of the two countries, and the situation in general, led to not only his demise but Viet Nam for 67 years ceased to exist and was chopped into three little pieces with strange names: Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina. This traumatic history has taught a lesson, a relevant and very important lesson for our time: heroism sometimes is selfish and disastrous.
MAGA is no doubt patriotic. That they may just want the country for themselves does not make them less patriotic. They have been angry seeing that the country has been “exploited” by foreigners, “hollowed out” by China in the words of one of its more fierce loyalists. They have loudly asserted that the U.S. has been cheated by its trading counterparts, especially China. The president, prompted by their advice, declared that the U.S. and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years. Using this self-serving “information”, MAGA has worked hard to push for the imposition of tariffs. They raised the banner “Make America Great Again” (that in hindsight did not make much sense as mentioned below). They have heroically led the charge against foreigners and foreign countries. And the president was persuaded and declared the tariffs war on the world, with China of course receiving the hammer, 125%. That means the common men, the consumers of everyday products will pay double for any item coming from China. If you ever happen to turn a product upside down to look at the bottom, from a teacup to a computer, more often than not you see the three words “Made in China”.
The numbers tell a different story, strikingly different.
During the last three decades, the United States has surged ahead of all major competitors. In 2008, the U.S. economy was about the same size as the Eurozone. By 2023, it was nearly twice that size. U.S. average wages were about 20 percent greater than the average of the advanced industrial world in 1990. They are now around 40 percent higher. The average Japanese person was 50 percent richer than an American in 1995 in terms of GDP per capita. Today, an American is about 150 percent richer than a Japanese person. In fact, the poorest American state, Mississippi, has a higher per capita GDP than Britain or France or Japan, (Source: the Fareed Zakaria GPS).
Now, MAGA, like General Nguyen, does not comprehend the situation clearly, misunderstand the balance of forces and underestimates its trading counterparts. With only 14.7% of its total export goes to the U.S., China can afford to go toe to toe with the U.S. and did raise its tariff against American goods also to 125%.
Thank Heavens that we do not lose a country but only a new iPhone, or a good vacations. And who actually will lose them? Us, humble common men yearning all year long for either one of them. We pay for MAGA’s ego and dark intentions.
The country does not need another department, but a small office located somewhere in the West Wing and employing some of the DOGE’s geniuses and their computers to evaluate, each quarter, the president’s appointees to determine their ability to understand the world as it is, not the world they dream it to be.
If they kept making mistakes, the next one would probably cost us not just an iPhone, or a computer, or a good vacation.
JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X).
