India Has a Tariff on America's Huge Cultural Surplus

We Are More Interested in US Culture Than It Cares About Ours But We May Already Have a Remedy in Place

- MANU JOSEPH

The complaint of Donald Trump is that most nations sell their goods cheaply in America, but never let America sell its products at low prices in their markets. He insists that this imbalance is a form of theft, a "rip-off" by its major trade partners, including India. But it does not feel that way.

As I try to write this paragraph, I have to constantly fight what America owns: distraction. Imagine one nation controlling the power to distract the world. There is ChatGPT, Twitter, Instagram, Google, Gmail, Kindle, WhatsApp, Netflix and The New York Times, which occasionally laments a distracted world. I have knocked out most of them from my American phone, but still.

There was a time when my work was more interesting than any distraction because a distraction then usually was just a doorbell ring or something of that quality. Today, the intrusion is probably more interesting than what I am trying to create. Also, what I create itself might be part of a future distraction on an American platform. This is not the only reason why it does not 'feel' as though the world doesn't buy enough of America. In fact, it is a very small part.