Transcript of the above video: 

So the title and the thumb of this are probably not overly familiar to many, although Big Lebowski fans will probably instantly know the line I am talking about. There is a line in the film The Big Lebowski where the Dude says to the bartender Gary, he says, "friends like these huh Gary?" and I thought that the whole meme if you will sort of sums up the current state of play with regard to if nothing else Thai American Trade just sort of generally. First things first, I did a video here recently with Wu and Swearengen from the old Deadwood series, Hang Dai. I want to be clear, the Thai American relationship is fine, okay. We are old, old friends; 200 years of relations. 191 years now of Treaty relationship. That's not going anywhere. There are ups and downs, highs and lows, these relationships are what they are. I have likened it in many circumstances to the relationship between Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday depending on the time you are examining the relationship; Thailand is either Wyatt or Doc or the US is either Wyatt or Doc. This is a slightly different facet of that. Look there are always going to be things that sovereign actors do that are not particularly if you will loved, whatever you want to call it, by other sovereign actors. Again, moving back to the original point of this video though is the real state of play regarding sort of American Trade relationships and I am hopeful there may be some back in America that may watch this video and maybe take something from it. Let me clear. I am not saying change everything - throw the baby out with the bathwater - just be aware of the optics of how some of these initiatives if you will look abroad and especially how they look to old-school allies who are used to having a pretty go-along, get-along relationship with the United States; what am I talking about here? 

I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from the Bangkok Post, bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Certain foreign firms must 'self-certify' with Trump diversity rules: US Embassies. First off, let's be clear here. I'm not certain that “Trump diversity rules” is quite the correct term. Let me get into it. Quoting directly: "The United States is not planning to verify foreign firms over their diversity programmes.." - well thanks so much. I mean what? Are we supposed to be thrilled about that? - quoting further: "..but needs certain companies to self-certify compliance with new US rules, two of its main European embassies said Wednesday, after a furor over an apparent warning sent to European companies. There is no 'verification' required beyond asking contractors and grantees to self-certify their compliance -- in other words, we are just asking them to complete one additional piece of paperwork," the US Embassies in Paris and Berlin said in identical statements to Agence France-Presse (AFP). The spokesperson for both missions emphasized that the rule applied only to firms having contracts with or grants from US missions."  So, what are they talking about? They are talking about there's some kind of certification process as they say, "you have just got to fill out an extra form regarding the diversity of your corporation that is providing some sort of service or acting as a vendor or something for the Embassy". As usual, I urge those who are watching this video, go check out that article in the Bangkok Post for more details, but further into this. Okay, let's be clear what's going on here? Embassies, there's some rule out there that says US Embassies abroad, if they are engaging local services, they have to be compliant or in alignment with American "DEI principles" or whatever.

Now one, as we remember from Trump rolling into office in the first place, he got rid of a lot of this DEI stuff to begin with and that's why I find the headline a little bit disingenuous because whatever you want to say about Trump, he has genuinely said that look this DEI stuff is something antithetical to this Administration, we are going to throw all that out. I'm wondering if this rule is some sort of remnant, it's in a law somewhere that can't just be overridden by Executive Order, I'm not quite sure what exactly that is. That said, stepping away from the issue of just this DEI thing with regard to Embassies and back to the issue of ‘friends’ like these, look is this what America should be doing at this time especially to long-time trade partners and allies? Just piling on, you have got to fill out documentation if you want to do business with the Embassy here regarding DEI - "oh it's just one document”. You know, they add up. I've been doing US Immigration Law for almost over 17 years now and all I ever, it's just this, it's just that, we are just adding this. Well, it accretes and look, let's look at Thailand here, and let's look at things through the perspective of call it the last 75 days, okay. Prior to the current Administration coming into office, as discussed in this video, there were American Tax agents being sent abroad including here to Thailand, not to go into too much detail regarding that in this video as it's not the purpose of this video to go into that, but suffice it to say Yellen - as we have discussed in many other videos - talked about the fact they were creating 97,000 new IRS agents and on top of that we are pushing the OECD supranational colonialist financialist agenda in the last Administration. That is clear; we know this. So that sort of went away with the Executive Order from Trump - although we are still kind of dealing with the lingering mist of it out here in Thailand, and it remains to be seen exactly how this is going to play out. As noted in other videos, I have serious problems with it. I think it infringes on Thailand's sovereignty among other things; I think it's bad just across the board. That being said, okay that was what? 80 days ago. In the meantime now and I'm not going to go too much into the Trump tariffs, but he's talking about it and we have now had "liberation day”.  I haven't had a chance yet this morning to do all the research I need to do to figure out what all that means, especially as it pertains to Thailand. I am hopeful that overall, it is going to be reasonable changes. That said, it remains to be seen. I haven't actually looked at this stuff yet, but we do know they are talking tariffs, and we have also seen things in the Press where they are talking about, "oh Thailand may be in trouble because they are 11th or 10th, depending on which list you read regarding folks that import things into the United States and this is somehow a problem. I really think it is worth noting, people seem to be forgetting how in the first Trump Administration, what was his name, Tillerson, who was Secretary of State at the time came out here to Thailand and basically did a big speech browbeating the Thais. I've never been frankly more angry at a US Secretary of State personally ever, than when he came out here and was browbeating the Thais about how the Thais need to do this, that and the other thing. And basically, we are importing too much to the Americans. My response at the time was sort of, "well, that's market dynamics. There's a demand in America. The Thais can make it, they're sending it there." Meanwhile, Thailand did not ask to become the manufacturing epicentre or a manufacturing epicentre for the West, okay? This was imposed upon her over decades, going back hundreds, yeah, 150 years okay. So when this tariff stuff comes down and it's framed as if - I'm going to purely look at Thailand - as if Thailand is some sort of villain, we're just trying to get on with it and do business and basically make a living in sort of a national sense. Why all the blowback? Why all the browbeating? Now I can understand approaching, "hey, we've got a major imbalance here, we need to do something about that", but Tillerson came in last time and it was all real aggressive. Again I don't know how Trump's going to play this this time. Look, Trump is a very different Trump from the first term in many, many ways. I very much respect him, and he is wise too now, on a level that in my opinion in the past I would argue Trump was canny. Trump somehow in the interim became wise. I suspect having to go through a Rico trial and sit through a bunch of Court proceedings probably added to that. It was kind of almost like a trial by fire. You become like steel or something after you come out the other end. 

That being said, the optics of this really aren't that great. The Thais are looking, “oh, if I want to do business with the Embassy, I have got to fill out a bunch of paperwork through DEI that the Administration doesn't even seem to really care about”. Meanwhile, we are getting all this sort of pressure on the trade front basically because we trade; I mean that seems to be the overall, "oh you're trading, and we don't like it because it's not that favourable to us." Okay, fine. It just get piles on and to take that on top of all the craziness that emanated out of the last Administration - which you have to wonder what Authority they were operating under especially when the auto-pen seems to have just been on autopilot the entire four years - but that said, from the optics of Thailand, looking at this the last almost three months now, call it 90 days, it don't look great. And you do have to kind of ask yourself, with friends like these, like in The Big Lebowski, and again I bring up that particular scene because right before it, there's a scene where him and his two best friends kind of have a little quarrel if you will and Walter gets up and walks away and says, "come on Donny, let's go get ourselves a lane". 

The point I'm trying to make is there are always little quarrels that may happen, or there may be conflicting notions about how things may be in any relationship; that's just sort of the way of the world. My hope is that maybe the United States - at least in the context of Thailand - could look at the situation and assess the fact that one, Thailand has been a bulwark ally, I mean steadfast isn't even the word if you look at the history of it. I mean these folks have held with us when we were not in a good position out here, let's put it that way. And again it's not like other countries. My hope is this will be viewed in a broader context; they will sort of see all the optics, view it all in the aggregate and realize, 'hey putting all this pressure, combined with all of these requirements, combined with the fact that notwithstanding the fact it wasn't our Administration, but it was the country 90 days ago that was doing all kinds of crazy stuff with tax agents, I think it is fair to say, maybe a reassessment of the overall policy, at least as far as it applies to Thailand may be in order.