Uncertainty

The Philippines and the world are in the grip of uncertainty not felt in the last half century.

Major wars have erupted or will yet erupt.

The escalated Ukraine-Russia war, began Feb. 24, 2022,  is now on its third year. It is the largest and deadliest ground war since World War II, with half a million Russian soldiers and 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers, as casualties, per Donald Trump’s estimates. The Israel-Hamas war, began Oct. 7, 2023, has not seen the worst of it and instead engulfed the entire Middle East.

Tension is rising in the West Philippine Sea as China intensifies its island-grabbing spree and deploys more fully armed ships in the 3.5 million sq kms of the world’s most strategic waters today.

Fear is growing that China will finally make good its plan to invade Taiwan and teach its long-claimed province a lesson on who is boss and owner, earlier than the planned 2027 target launch. An invasion could finally trigger a nuclear war in true MAD fashion. MAD means mutually assured destruction, the doctrine that assumes a nuke war won’t happen because it has no winners, just losers.

Today, madmen are ascendant in major countries and they rule with overwhelming mandates. In 2024, 80 countries, half of the world’s population, held an election, from America to Russia to Venezuela, down to Indonesia, Pakistan and India. And the winners were, to say the least, problematic.

The Economist magazine doubts the possibility of China invading Taiwan, citing persistent corruption in the People’s Liberation Army. Corruption, however, never stops war. Proof is the Ukraine-Russia war, participated in by two of the world’s most corrupt armies.

Insisted The Economist on Dec. 5, 2024: “The turmoil in China’s high command reinforces a belief among several senior American officials that China will not be ready to invade Taiwan in this decade, as some had feared. That is not to say that China will stop using military force to coerce and intimidate neighbors. On November 29th it sent a nuclear-capable H-6n bomber for the first time on a joint patrol with Russian aircraft over the Sea of Japan. Later this week it may launch another large military exercise around Taiwan, in a show of displeasure at America’s decision to allow the self-governing island’s president, Lai Ching-te, to stop in Hawaii and Guam during a tour of the Pacific.”

Under Trump, America thinks it is an island by itself. The president-elect reckons he will save $641 billion if he abandons NATO and stops financing Ukraine’s fight with Russia. He vows to impose tariffs, as high as 20 percent on trading partners, and 60 percent on China.

Tariffs are a tax on imported goods. Americans will pay for it, not the exporting country. Higher cost of imported goods means higher prices of these goods when sold domestically. That in turn will trigger inflation, which in turn could slow down consumption, job creation and overall economic growth. As of July 2024, the US had imported $545 billion worth of machinery, $454-billion consumer goods, $388-billion industrial supplies, $282-billion cars, $122-billion foods and beverages and $76-billion other goods.  That’s $1.86 trillion. Tax that with 20 percent tariff, and Americans will have to pay $373 billion more, for the same volume of imports – twice the amount the US has spent so far financing the Ukraine war, now a cash sinkhole. Trade wars burn your pockets at twice the rate of armed wars.

Before Trump’s threatened tariff tax, global trade was set to reach a record $33 trillion in 2024, according to the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Dec. 5, 2024. This $1-trillion increase reflects a 3.3 percent annual growth and highlights resilience in global trade despite persistent challenges.

In the Philippines, the carefully curated unity between the Philippines’ two premier ruling families is tattered beyond repair, thanks to the fissiparous Sara Duterte, whose ravenous and wanton waste of people’s money is now legendary.

The VP’s spending viciousness exposed by a House quad comm led by an actor, a former NPA assassin, a former police general and a scion of a fabled family in Surigao, the Duterte brand of politics would have been hallowed out by the time of the May 2025 elections.

Her frivolous spending sprees aside, Sara has threatened to chop President Marcos Jr.’s head off, mafia style, and even more bizzarely, to dig up the late president Marcos Sr.’s corpse at Libingan ng mga Bayani and throw it into the West Philippine Sea. As if that were not enough, Ms. Sara-sin also has contracted killer/killers to assassinate President Marcos Jr., the First Lady Louise Araneta Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez – in the event she is assassinated herself. It’s called pre-emptive non-assassination. But the harm is done. The independent observer not inured to such bloody politics is turned off.

Will Sara be impeached? My guess is the 318-member House will muster the required one-third vote to impeach her. In impeachment, the House acts as the prosecutor; the Senate acts as the judge. The Senate may conduct a quickie trial to show how bad a politician Sara-sin is – the political equivalent of hanging your dirty underwear in public.

Will the Senate convict Sara-sin? The last time the senators voted for conviction (January 2012), chief justice Renato Corona, the president (BS Aquino III) shelled out P1 billion of pork to grease palms of 19 senators. His guilt? Corona kept a dollar account, undisclosed – which is allowed by law.

Investors, in the stock market, and the genuine and speculative ones, are spooked. The stock market index hit 6724.82 on Dec. 10, 2024, up 1.1 percent from December 2023 but down 11 percent from a high of 7535 in October 2024.

Hey, investor, will you invest in the Philippines?

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