My View issues 750th piece when Trump enforces unilaterally 30% tariff on Sri Lanka

WITH this 750th piece, My View completes fourteen and a half years of unbeaten record. First appearing in January 2011,1 it has been published as an opinion column on every Monday, and if Monday is a holiday, the next working day. It is meant for those who are not conversant with economics and not for professional economists, though there are some belonging to this latter category being its regular readers.

- By W.A. Wijewardena

The tagline, Economics Matters, refers to the fact that everything — political, cultural, social, family, or artworks - can be analysed in terms of economics. That is the reason for the column to review movies and books of fictions. But the analysis has always been to dig out the economic principles underlying them. The readership has been diverse comprising lawyers, engineers, scientists, businessmen, bureaucrats, managers, and students.

It was an experiment conducted by the writer to present complex economic issues to ordinary people in simple language. It has so far survived four presidential regimes in Sri Lanka though the articles being critical of some of their policies. Following the same critical approach, it will analyse the policies of the present presidential regime too for the benefit of the readers.

Trump's attempt to Make America Great Again through tariffs

An important global development which My View has critiqued in the recent past had been the ex parte tariff revision which the US President Donald Trump had introduced to USA's trading partners, big or small. It had hit by the unexpecting global community like a tsunami that had destroyed property and lives in a moment. According to some analysts, his policy had led to the creation of a new world order which had been based on free trade, globalisation, and free movement of capital. But in my view, Trump’s tariff policy had created disorder in a world which had been functioning smoothly. Hence, I coined the term Trump(dis)order to describe the new tariff and economic policy being promoted by Trump administration.2