Wallflower

If the Southeast Asian economic scene was something like your high school junior-senior prom, the Philippines will be the consistent wallflower.

- BOO CHANCO

The most popular dance music would be played, getting everyone into the dance floor, except the Philippines. That's because it is unprepared to dance.

So many economic opportunities have come and gone that could have truly elevated the Philippines into tiger economy status, but we always miss the boat. There were several waves of investors wanting to diversify out of China, but few entertained the idea of coming to the Philippines.

The last big wave of investors ended up making Vietnam their new favorite haven, including manufacturers from the United States. It is perplexing that American investors would rather put their money in a communist country that was engaged in a long-drawn-out bitter war with them not too long ago. And here we are, a former American colony whose culture is so Americanized that it might as well have been the 51st state. Yet, Intel, a major American company, left the Philippines for Vietnam 16 years ago. A decade and a half after, we still haven't figured out why they left.

So, here we are again with another opportunity to be the belle of the ball because the Trump tariffs imposed on our regional rivals were significantly higher than ours.

It might have been easy to dance away with the US market shares of our neighboring countries. But we are dumbfounded and unprepared as usual.

Dr. Rafaelita Aldaba, an emeritus research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, has written a reaction paper on the implications of the Trump tariff for the Philippines. It is a pretty extensive paper that our policy makers in government as well as corporate decision makers should read to guide our next steps.