The Tribune

Let’s be frank: being geographically and culturally close to the US has been good for The Bahamas in many ways for much of its existence as a sovereign, independent state.

The ties that bind our country to America, especially to Florida but also to many other states for various reasons, are strong and enduring. Lots of us go to college in the US. Some of us marry Americans. Many of us have relatives who work there. Shopping in South Florida has been mostly taken for granted as almost a birthright of Bahamian citizenship. Airline pre-clearance centres at our major airports make such visits easier and make us feel special – usually in a good way. Our dollar is pegged at par with the US dollar.

We watch American TV, listen to American music. We are deluged by their culture. And it’s really pretty cool that American icons like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan obviously have a soft spot for our country, visiting favourite places here regularly and even investing here.

Tourism from the United States significantly fuels our economy in normal times and contributes to thousands of good jobs for Bahamians.

Through the generally benevolent engagement of American civilian departments and agencies and military branches, our national defence and law enforcement efforts are strengthened. While The Bahamas remains a proud member of the British Commonwealth and CARICOM and the UN, the old truism remains potent and accurate: When the US sneezes, The Bahamas catches a cold.

We caught a pretty bad cold back during the drug wars over 30 years ago. What Bahamian family was not touched by the scourge of cocaine and its transshipment through Bahamian territory? This country clearly was victimised by the lucre and seduction of a massive criminal commercial enterprise that devastated us simply because of our convenient geographical location close to Florida.

We are suffering from a different kind of cold now and it’s also one that portends much future suffering. And our geographical proximity to Florida is again the source of our misfortune.

As the prime minister continues to guide the Bahamian economy toward greater relaxation of virus-related restrictions and there are encouraging signs of our recovery from COVID-19, recent data released in the US suggests things are going in the opposite direction in Florida and elsewhere.

The Sunshine State, led by a governor who is a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, was one of the 14 American states to heed Trump’s exhortations and most quickly lift restrictions to restart its economy. Among those 14 states, there has since been a staggering 26 percent rise in new reported coronavirus cases. Florida is clearly trending in the wrong direction.

Since many of our foreign visitors come from Florida, this is a particularly bad sign. Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas are also on the list of states now experiencing a spike in new cases since lifting social and economic restrictions. The implications are dismal. Arrivals here from the American southeast, at least in the near term, will likely shrink because of health or economic hardship. And those who  might visit could potentially expose us to the virus all over again.

In addition to these depressing statistics, the overall economic news from the US is uncertain. You probably realised this already, but the United States officially slipped into an official economic recession in February, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Normally, a recession signifies two straight quarters of economic shrinkage. But in this case, the bureau considered rapidly rising unemployment and domestic production declines in rendering its judgment.

The American Bureau of Labour Statistics just announced that it had adjusted the nation’s unemployment rate following discovery of a “classification error” for March, April and May. The actual jobless rate was 19.7 percent for April and 16.3 percent for May.

A positive retail report this week buoyed Trump and stock indices. But Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell warned “significant uncertainty remains about the strength and timing of this recovery”.

The American Congressional Budget Office has long fulfilled its mandate to offer to the US Congress unbiased and nonpartisan economic forecasting. The CBO now estimates American unemployment rates will stay above ten percent through next year and that the US economy won’t fully recover until the end of this decade.

Maybe all this data and these forecasts will prove to be merely a misguided overreaction. Maybe the US economy and health picture will brighten much more quickly and the healthy and lucrative flow of visitors from the US will resume strongly and soon.

But it certainly wouldn’t be prudent to count on it.

Trump losing support of intelligence analysts

President Donald Trump is not being paranoid when he accuses mainstream media like The Washington Post and CNN of being out to get him. They absolutely are out to get him. Headlines and Breaking News on these and other outlets regularly pillory the president and eagerly anticipate the day when he will no longer occupy the White House.

One must, therefore, consider the source (the Post) of the following story. Still, it is sobering. It seems quite a few retired American intelligence analysts and officials feel queasy when observing the current state of American executive politics and society.

‘I’ve seen this kind of violence,” one analyst said of the massive American protests against police violence and the occasionally deadly responses, and Trump’s bellicose stance toward the protests. “This is what autocrats do. This is what happens in countries before a collapse. It really does unnerve me.”

Many will recall Trump’s call earlier this month for US governors to “dominate the streets” and use as much force as needed to disperse mostly peaceful protesters. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time,” Trump reportedly said.

This prompted another retired official to say Trump’s actions and words “reminded me of what I reported on for years in the Third World. Saddam. Bashar. Qaddafi. They all did this.”

A former Trump envoy told the Post that “the imagery of a head of state in a call with other governing officials saying ‘dominate the streets! dominate the battlespace!’ – these are images that will define America for some time. It makes it much more difficult for us to distinguish ourselves from other countries we are trying to influence or oppose.”

None of this deterred Trump loyalist and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from decrying Chinese crackdowns on peaceful Hong Kong protesters. “If there is any doubt about Beijing’s intent, it is to deny Hong Kongers a voice and a chance,” Pompeo said in a news release.

It’s likely the irony of his remarks was lost on the secretary.

Bolton book likely to spark some fireworks

While we are in the realm of foreign affairs, little has been heard in recent months from former UN ambassador and Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, the smart but scary conservative foreign policy maven whose mastery of Washington bureaucracies was matched by his unflinching defence of President George W Bush’s misbegotten invasion of Iraq in 2003 and his relentless opposition to the theocrats who rule Iran, among other outspoken passions.

After basically forcing Trump to fire him (or did he resign, as he claims?), Bolton retreated from public life to write his tell-all memoir.

Next week, it will hit bookstores. Lawsuits and threats of more will no doubt increase in numbers and volume over the coming days as Trump’s lawyers and Bolton’s lawyers bicker about whether or not Bolton revealed classified information and thus violated federal law in writing his book. One certain result will be to increase book sales.