Archives for June 2019

In my foregoing post, I wrote at unexpected length on the subject of Europa—a subject in whose telling such themes as royalty and promiscuity, abduction and divine impregnation, trauma and triumph, mythology and history all converge into a curious tale. Indeed, in my mind, it’s the curiosity that fortifies its enviable position in my memory. Though I’m incessantly enamored of this myth and never in need of any real impetus to bring it to mind and, having so brought it, to share it in words, I found myself reflecting on it as I began thinking about the present condition of the world. Specifically, I was thinking about that part of the world to which our dearest Europa lends her now celestial, now continental name.

I speak, of course, of Europe, as if you hadn’t the aptitude to guess. In a word, her state of affairs and her affairs of state look to be very badly off. Pallid, in fact, might be the more accurate word—undoubtedly the more clinical—to describe exactly how this continent in decline looks at this moment in time. Feeble, diffident, and fully drained of its prior vigor and health, the countenance of stolid-old Europe has changed in a dramatic way. Now, with cheeks sunk, eyes weary, skin sallow, and head so crestfallen that it remembers not how it ever stood fully erect, Europe is hardly the recognizable friend upon whose strength we ardent Atlanticists used to rely. She’s no longer the burly ally at whose entrance the Pillars of Heracles stood and from whose mouth the Delphic oracles spoke. Gone are the days when she was the last bastion of Christendom, the promulgator of freedom, and the defender of the practice of every faith.

Europe, at least so far as we knew it, is being drained of its vitality, of its unity, of the very essence of its life. Certainly in disrepair, if not in the throes of outright dissolution, the continent is hastening toward an important juncture. It’ll prove a moment in its millennia-long history from which it can’t hope to escape. Inevitably, this moment will arrive and we, gathered eulogists the lot of us, will record it point by point. Indeed, it (or, as we might more accurately call that schismatic body of twenty-six discordant states), they are barreling toward a head-on collision with their future. When finally it arrives, as always it does, it’ll make for a philosophical as well as a political crash.

At its point of impact, you’ll see the destruction of high-minded ideals and the restoration of realities. Governments will have to revert to their first and founding principles, the reasons for which they were made to exist. Chiefly, they’ll have to assure the protection of one’s property, one’s liberty, and one’s self. America has, of course, appropriated and imbibed this happy triune of rights. More than that, presumptuously and, as it’s turned out, salubriously we’ve come to think of it as our own. It’s become, in our own way, a sort of secular Nicene Creed—a mellifluous political ode to our exceptional past. Even those most exiguously educated about or ill-disposed toward our nation recognize the resonance and permanence of this truth.

Europe, whence this idea first arose (from the mind of that Leviathan of a thinker named John Locke), seems to have forsaken this idea—that which I consider its greatest export. Sovereignty—of the nation, of the township, and most importantly of the self—has been sacrificed on the altar of inclusivity. To be anything but radically cosmopolitan has become, in the eyes of many within the intelligentsia, shameful and indecent. That’s putting it rather gently. Most of the thinkers under whom we menial workers exist would consider it unforgivably barbarous and uncouth. Multiculturalism, they proclaim in response, is an unmitigated good. It must be embraced unquestioningly even if its acceptance is to result in injury. Euroscepticism, they soon thereafter follow, is obviously an evil concept. It’s consistent with the thought of a churl, of a nationalist, of a bigoted mind. Thus, it’s fully deserving of the opprobrium it roundly receives.

Fertile Europa, mythical mother of this confused and withering landmass to which she gave birth, was taken against her will from her home. A princess by lineage, she was brought from the tranquil shores of Lebanon to the rugged landscape of Crete. It was, if you will, the very earliest instance of translatio imperii—the movement of empire from the east to the west, the former dwindling and the latter burgeoning. The duration of her travel was unrecorded, but we can assume she made haste before landing at her adopted home. Her mode of transportation was the sturdy back of a bull—an animal for whom the adjective rambunctious rather than amphibious normally applies, but even the severest skeptics among us smile at this incredible part of the myth. After all, as it turns out, the bull was in fact Zeus. Upon reaching Crete, he accomplished his goal. He celebrated his taxing Mediterranean crossing by planting in fecund Europa’s womb his Olympian seed. A continent and a king named Minos were instantly born.  

The symbolism of this rape or abduction of Europa (the former word, archaic in construction, is grating to modern sensibilities), when viewed through the lens of the politics of today, strikes me as being very clear. Playing the part of the taurine, sexually intemperate Zeus is the European Union. Like a haughty and divine power, its central governing body stands above the continent at Brussels as Zeus stood among gods in the sky. It’s a supranational body administering to an amalgam of fiercely nationalistic states. Its bureaucrats dictate from on-high to a populace from whom they’ve earned little in the way of respect. They’ve seen it fit to use every method to make one vision of Europe coincide with them all and they’ve acted, as did Zeus, in a peremptory and self-righteous way.

Then there’s Europa herself. Abducted by that now omnipotent, now complacent European Union is the sovereignty of each member state. Each country’s ability to determine its own governance and the manner by which it desires itself run has been forcibly overtaken by the E.U. On such ideologically-fraught questions as immigration, customs, culture, and trade, one solution is annually deemed appropriate for them all. Each country, impotent in response, thus sees its sovereignty sailing away—as if it were Europa scurrying involuntarily toward Crete.

Not only Europa, but the very Europe to which she gave her name might be on the verge of becoming a curious part of history. The most recently held elections for the E.U. parliament saw a striking increase in the number of moderately right-wing, unabashedly nationalistic individuals chosen. Instead of clamoring from without, it appears these exasperated nationalists will change the supranational system from within. There may not be, however, a Europe when they’re finished.

Resonant to all, though unfortunately not always as universally repugnant as it might be, the language of war comes in three varieties. At its most innocuous, it’s figurative. This annoys us but imperils us not. As it relates to war, figurative language is, at least in most cases, used rather to arouse animosity than to effectuate any real end. Words alone are the weapons used, and ink—in the absence of blood—is worth every drop. Though perhaps fistic, it’s ultimately only rhetoric, and we consider it with lenience and grant it its place.

At its most dangerous, the language of war is literal. Considering the three types, this confronts us as being the most perilous. It’s the type to which we must be most perceptive if we are, in the words of that slightly too ingenuous genius Immanuel Kant, to seek the perpetuation of peace in this truculent world. If unchecked, the literal verbalization of the words of war quickly becomes their mobilization. Troops soon find themselves gathered in serried lines along distant frontiers. This is the proximate cause of the destruction of states and the premature deaths of people—be they innocent or belligerent. The language of war, when literally applied, is odious to the enlightened, deleterious to the soul, and always deadly to the body in which it’s housed.

Finally, at its most impetuous, the language of war is financial. Indeed, it’s this third variety upon which we focus our attention at this time. We do so as our exuberant and petulant, tiring and tireless, affective and divisive leader of our free world declares war on the freedom of trade.

A proposition at which we once laughed now demands our sober resignation: at the behest of President Trump, we are in the throes of a legitimate, ominous, and multi-hemispheric trade war. As of this week, we’ve enmeshed ourselves in a sort of trial by tariff with no fewer than two countries (or, as more appropriately we might call them henceforth, two combatants of a foreign, fiscal type). Important to note is that they’re two of the countries, of all of the countries on this expansive Earth, with whom our domestic companies and our government agencies do the most business.

The first country-combatant is China. Of course, it’s a nation of incredible size and strength, a modern Oriental leviathan in every biblical sense of the word. Confucian in origin and impecunious for so long a duration of its stoic life, China has since tasted the epicureanism of the modern age. Unabashed and understandably hungry (a result, doubtless, of a half-century of enforced famine under subsequent autocratic regimes), it wants to have its long-awaited fill. That said, to have its fill is to subvert its peculiar though central philosophy of austerity and socialistic deference, but there seems to exist in China little in the form of cognitive dissonance. To misquote Julius Caesar—a man, in his day, just like Xi Jinping in ours, given to delusions of permanence of office—it’s come to love the capitalism (however much invigilated and controlled by the state) but hate the capitalist. “State-run” capitalism is the putative banner under which this vexingly contradictory country runs.

It’s a country about whose trade practices we’ve come to know much and, in having attained an understanding of them, have come very much to despise. They are anathema to the American way. And, in the accumulation of our wisdom—hardened, as it’s been, through our dealings with the clever apparatchiks of that pseudo-communistic state—we’ve become enraged. It’s not without rationality that we’ve become so angry at the hand we’ve been dealt by Beijing. Despite the genial Sino-American façade worn daily in the press, China is an inveterate antagonist, if not a tempting economic enemy, for those who pay them any mind. It’s a country of whose illiberal trade policies and blatant intellectual property crimes we liberals (with the emphasis being on the lowercase inscription of that “L”) and intellectuals here in America have become too painfully aware. Yet, that being said, it seems to be the case that these are the sorts of crimes for which we’ll no longer stand.

Unable to negotiate a trade deal with this most ancient of states, our tyro Trump placed on the importation of China’s many goods a score of tariffs at disquietingly high rates. China, shrewd and calculating as she is incalculably old, responded in kind. Thus, each has slapped upon the economy of the other an expensive incentive to shop domestically and to spurn foreign trade. The effect is likely to be mutually injurious. Generous subsidies will be needed for the domestic producers whose products no longer sparkle in foreign markets with the same shimmer of affordable appeal. Consumers, likewise, will be adversely affected. Consumable products, shamefully foreign but enticingly cheap, will now be set at prohibitively high costs. The response will be one of two things: we’ll either purchase the desired item from a potentially inferior American manufacturer (at an inflated or a simply higher rate), or we’ll charge higher prices to the consumer who awaits at the ultimate point of sale.

It’s true, the very thought of these tariffs were enough to roil financial markets—prone, as they are, to tremble at even the shadow of a portent. Now, the imminence of their effectuation is a reason of actual distress. Adding to that nauseating feeling of money hastening down the drain is the recent announcement that more tariffs would be expanded to this hemisphere, indeed to the neighbor atop whom our nation rests. With an eye toward their incremental increase, the Trump administration has announced tariffs on a various assortment of Mexican goods.

Mexico, proprietor of a frankly middling economy and one that’s dwarfed by that of China, is nevertheless a country with whom the U.S. does a ton of business. From agricultural imports to automotive parts and designs, goods and materials cross the southern border with dizzying and bustling and obviously lucrative rapidity every single day. The reason, however, for President Trump’s imposition of a tariff with Mexico isn’t nearly so easily defensible as it might be in the case of China. Rather a political than a purely economic measure, the administration is seeking to tackle the immigration problem by which our country has been positively burdened for the last thirty years by squeezing the Mexican government with the withering grip of our economic force. This is an indirect approach to the problem of the movement of people that will, in all likelihood, be completely unavailing.

This whole Mexican approach appears to me entirely misbegotten. Indeed, if we’re to take a slightly less sympathetic view of this administration (and who would deny us this liberty), it looks, at best, desultory and at worst inadequately construed. To address the failures of our immigration system by doing actual damage to our businesses is in no way beneficial and won’t improve either end. Surely, the Mexican government won’t be stirred to alter its policies at the border in the face of a prospective economic decline. Rather than play an inferior role to a now capricious, now obnoxious U.S., it’s hoping to bolster its trade with countries more congenial to its interests—countries like Canada and those throughout South America (save Venezuela) who hope to find themselves in the swell of a rising tide. In addition, an unintended consequence may be looming. The sobering nature of tariffs is the mutuality of their ill-effect. If Mexico’s economy is in any significant fashion affected in an adverse way, it could cause more and not fewer immigrants to seek greener American pastures. This is a possibility for which the Trump administration—hell-bent though it is on reducing illegal immigration—ought to be prepared.

Ultimately, to treat as amicably as I can this administration, I’ll say this: in the case of China, President Trump is addressing an economic problem economically. In the case of Mexico, he’s addressing an immigration problem wrongheadedly. Either way, that’s to speak little toward their efficacy or their chance for future success.  

I’ll end by seasoning my amicability with a pinch of salt. Severity, really, is the dash that I need. Without this, no plate would be considered complete. A word must be said about the distance that exists between the president’s comprehension of tariffs as general, fundamental matter and what actually they are. If one’s to speak the language of financial war, as Trump certainly is trying to do, it must be in a cogent, accurate, and intelligible tongue. Trump has failed repeatedly to check off any of these boxes. His fundamental understanding of what a tariff is appears to me completely erroneous and ill-conceived. I’ve not yet read a definition that’s consistent with his impression.

Surely much to his staff’s interminable chagrin, he seems not to understand how these simple and quite old impediments to importation (what we call tariffs) work, and the many economic advisors by whom he’s surrounded haven’t been successful in a long-overdue remedial course. Doubtless, it’s not for a lack of trying: while they’ve been nothing if not hortatory, Trump’s been characteristically hidebound. The notion that a tariff is a tax on China is an obstinate opinion of which the president can’t be disabused. Of course, a tariff is nothing of the sort, but rather a burden imposed on American importers of Chinese goods.

If we’re to be successful in this ill-conceived, two-fronted, whimsical, and uneconomical trade war, it’d be eminently helpful if our commander-in-chief understood the language of war—be it figurative, literal, or, as it pertains to us today, financial.