"Isolationism and protectionism" (#261, Topic F)

This morning, I was awaken by NPR's rebroadcast of President Bush's speech at the National University of Singapore -- he is on the first leg of an 8-day trip to Asia to attend the APEC forum. When I began listening, the President was talking about "we" "we" repeatedly (in reference to the Iraq involvement). When I was the Director of Chinese University of Hong Kong's graduate program in business administration and its Dean of Faculty of Commerce and Social Science, I was also an external examiner for Nanyang University, which later became a part of the NUS. In that capacity, I have probably been in Singapore 6 or 7 times. Later, when the 4th World Xiangqi Championship was held in Singapore in 1995, I was also there. Thus, I think I know a little bit about Singapore, which is generally regarded as one of the best managed countries in the world. About 70% of her population is of Chinese ethnicity; the remainder is composed of people of Indian, Malaysian and European ethnicity. So, when I heard the President's speech, I asked myself: Were I in the audience, how would I react? On USA's plans in Iraq, how would that affect an average Singaporean? As the former secretary of defense famously said: "You break it, you own it." You went to Iraq; you take care of it -- please don't drag us in, don't "we" "we" us. In short, that portion of his speech was, in my view, designed mainly for domestic US consumption. Why export it? The president then talked about USA's flirting with isolationism and protectionism. Over and over again, he talked about "free trade", but it did not seem that he really meant it. In actual deed, Singapore scores well on the free trade front, whereas, in US, one reads two US senators' threatening, off and on, about slapping a 27.5% tax on all items imported from China, and wonders whether this is free trade or protectionism in action. So, why talk about free trade abroad when it is not practiced at home? This evening, over PBS, a panel was analyzing the president's speech, using words such as "hypocritical" to describe it. One panelist stated that, instead of blaming Asians for their high savings rate, do something with Americans' living hand-to-mouth or incurring a heavy load of debt. Tonight, the president leaves for Vietnam, where the APEC forum is held. He was supposed to carry a greeting, from the US Congress, on Vietnam's joining the World Trade Organization. But he will be going there empty-handed.